Michelle Branch is 18. She sings. She's cute. And though you probably think you know what she sounds like based on those facts, chances are you're wrong. Michelle, who is releasing her major label debut, the melodic rock album The Spirit Room on August 14, is definitely not the slick teen queen that those stats suggest. She's more comfortable playing her guitar than working with Swedish svengalis, and if she can dance, she's not admitting to it.

Alicia Keys is selling truckloads of records as a writes-her-own-music, plays-her-own-music, seemingly-way-too-young-to-be-so-talented R&B artist, and it looks like Michelle is going to claim that wordy title for the rock set. Michelle spent her formative years in Flagstaff, Arizona, with her Dutch/Indonesian/French mother and Irish father before moving to Sedona, Arizona at age 11. There, she continued sing, but wanted to expand her musical horizons. She got a guitar for her 14th birthday, taught herself how to play it and immediately started writing songs.

Sedona is known as a very spiritual place, and fate smiled on Michelle there. A year after she became obsessed with her guitar, her soon-to-be-manager, Jeff Rabhan, was being shown a timeshare resort by a family friend of Michelle's ("It was one of those 'get a hundred bucks to see a timeshare' things," Michelle laughs to TeenPeople.com. "I don't know if that's a positive thing for a manager...") The friend tipped Michelle off to the presence of Jeff, who was working in the music industry in LA, and rideless, enterprising Michelle was off to give him her demo tape — driving herself in a golf cart.

Cut to 2001. Michelle is about to release The Spirit Room on Maverick Records, the label co-owned by none other than Madonna (who Michelle was excitedly off to see perform, and maybe meet for the first time, at Madison Square Garden after she visited the TEEN PEOPLE office). What does Michelle think of her prospects? "I think people my age are ready for lyrics that mean something," she says. With first single "Everywhere" rapidly finding fans — the video is cleaning up on Nick Video Picks and recently debuted on MTV — it looks like she might be right.