Mal DeFleur started performing about a year ago as a tribute to French singer, actress, and Broadway star Liliane Montevecchi. In the past few months, she's evolved—through collaboration with pianist Christopher Jones and the creativity of stylist Jack Caton—into a far more nuanced presence all her own. Recently at Vito's, while singing in French (and despite any language barrier), DeFleur seemed to make everyone in the room experience a palpable joy as well as a strange sorrow she seems to carry with her from some mysterious past. "C'est la vie, darlings," she told the crowd as she closed her set with Edith Piaf's "La Vie en Rose."

"It is one of the greatest songs of all time," she told me.

Besides Piaf, who are her top five favorite female singers of all time?

"Ooh, that would have to be Judy Garland, Justin Vivian Bond, Miriam Makeba, Maria Callas, and Neko Case."

Mal DeFleur will perform at the opening night of the 'Mo-Wave Queer Arts and Music Festival at Vermillion on Thursday, November 12.