Kevin Bronson on December 10th, 2008

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On the cover of Obi Best’s debut album “Capades,” singer-songwriter Alex Lilly, faraway look in her eyes, is pictured in the tentative embrace of three figures sheathed in dark cloth. It’s an homage to her song “Who Loves You Now,” which trundles through a lot of loves lost in 4 minutes 28 seconds. “Those are the ghosts of past relationships,” she says of the figures. “Even though you’ve broken up with them, you’ll compare every single person you meet in the future to them.”

So it is with Lilly’s music, a gallimaufry of pop, jazz and electro that squirms mightily to free itself from the shackles of trite balladry or obtuse experimentation. With melody lines that hardly sit still, lyrics rich in wordplay and a sprinkling of sound effects you might hear in a rural backyard, Lilly’s compositions manage to come off at once winsome and wily, and if you don’t pay attention to the affectations in her airy vocals, you might mistake an open heart for a bleeding one.

• ||| Download: “Nothing Can Come Between Us”

“Capades” was made with a stellar cast of L.A. musicians — drummer Barbara Gruska, multi-instrumentalist Bram Inscore and guitarist-keyboardist Oscar Schedin among the many — and its sonic roots were watered here too. Lilly is a backup vocalist for the Inara George/Greg Kurstin jazz-pop project the Bird and the Bee. In fact, the best reference point for Obi Best’s debut might be that it could occupy sonic shelf space between George’s 2006 debut, “All Rise,” and 2007’s “The Bird and the Bee.”

Lilly got busy writing after she moved from San Francisco to Venice with her mother Melissa four years ago. “I wrote a lot of the songs in a little room in Venice; the others I wrote while I was squatting around town,” she says, admitting to a certain degree of finickiness in her songwriting process. “Whatever I’m feeling, it has to be pretty specific. … I like to find pieces of music that have some sort of identity, that feel like they ought to belong to something.”

That quest for the organic seems to have manifested itself in “Capades'” unexpected melodic twists and turns, even if its occasional whimsy make you feel like you’re an outsider, perhaps witnessing music made for other musicians. Of this, Lilly is aware. “I don’t like it when you feel like musicians are winking at you,” she says. “But when I’m writing it’s not, ‘On second thought, I think I’ll insert this crazy chord here!’ If it sounds too [familiar], I’ll just take it in a different direction.”

“Capades” was released digitally in August on Social Science Recordings (where the band is having a video contest for the song “Swedish Boy”); physical release is due Feb. 24.

||| Live: Obi Best performs tonight at the Hotel Cafe.