Sufjan Stevens is one of my favorite songwriters/performers of the last few years. Pretty popular on the indie folk scene. His last album Illinois sold over 100,000, without major label support. One of the things he's known for is his plan to record an album for every state (which he's even said he'll never finish), but he's done Michigan and Illinois so far. Hard to describe his style, lots of lush arrangements with many different instruments, odd time signatures, etc... Other songs are pretty stark and intimate. It's no for everyone I'm sure, but I can't get tired of listening.
A little closer to home... He was featured on NPR last year. Radio producers challenged him to write a song based on tapes of interviews they'd conducted in Brinkley AR, where the allegedly extinct ivory-billed woodpecker was supposedly sited. So Sufjan wrote "The Lord God Bird" and they played it along with the interview tapes for the radio story. You can listen to the radio story and download the mp3 of the song itself
here.
He was going to go on a short tour, and Little Rock was listed with "To Be Announced" as the venue at first, and then they took it off the list.
Sorry to ramble... :)
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