The first time I saw Poppet, it was a complete surprise. All I knew about her was that the wonderful Tender Forever had chosen to share a stage with her at The New Frontier Lounge, and that was enough of a seal of approval for me. I headed down to the show, and the audience and I proceeded to be utterly delighted.

Poppet, AKA Molly Raney, is a hard act to do any justice in describing. Just one woman, a keyboard and a looping pedal, yet it amounts to so much more than the sum of its parts. Clad in a spandex green onesie, Raney commands the stage with inventive melodies and whimsical interpretive dance. Setting aside the clear complexity and thought that goes into her music, Poppet's performance has a very childlike quality to it. Even though her impressive voice and lively arrangements betray a sure hand, Poppet still feels like a little girl who has come down to the living room to put on a show.

"I studied classical piano for about ten years, as well as violin and voice," says Raney. "I had a pretty diverse musical background, but I was always performing other people's music. I remember, when I was younger, my piano teacher would force me to compose my own music. As a kid, I was always like, ‘Ugh.' It was my least favorite thing to do. I couldn't write music. I didn't understand how people wrote music, even up until I was in college and I had to compose pieces for these classes, I just still wasn't in it."

As Raney became more exposed to underground music through her time at UC Davis, she started to fall in with people who were finding their creativity from different places than a classroom.

"I was going to a lot of those and seeing people go and perform in front of a lot of people who were very supportive of whatever they were doing, regardless of whether it was quite conventional," says Raney. "One day, I was listening to this mix that my friend had made of all these indie and alternative artists, and I just realized: Oh, I have something to write! (Laughs) I just sat down at my computer and started writing music and then just became a prolific songwriter after that. Or, at least, for a time.

"When I first started Poppet, I was pushing against my intense training, and writing much more simplistic songs and singing in a pretty simplistic style," says Raney. "I was sort of trying to eschew all of this heady stuff that I'd grown up studying. But, I think now, over the years I feel I've connected more with my classical background. When I work on stuff, now, I definitely am more focused on writing more complex vocal melodies and trying to use my voice as an instrument, as I did for so many years when I was younger."

These years of training reveal themselves in the effortlessly beautiful songs that Poppet performs. Utilizing her loop pedal to layer her voice and keys, Raney creates a choir of Poppets to envelope the room. This beauty, though, is largely couched in a playful oddness that calls to mind the early, freewheeling work of Bjork. Even though this element of performance art remains central to Poppet, it never comes across as a front, nor does it succumb to self-seriousness. Poppet strikes the perfect balance.

When an artist manages to catch me off-guard, as Poppet did, I always jump at the chance to pass that feeling on to others. Poppet's show at The New Frontier will honor the release of her long-awaited proper debut LP, The Blue Sky is Always Blue, out on Bicycle Records. Don't miss it.

POPPET, w/ Mirrorgloss, True Holland, 9 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 20, The New Frontier Lounge, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, $5, 253.572.4020