To look at and hear her, you would be hard-pressed to pin the tail on Regina Spektor's family tree. Part-Bronx, part-Russian, part-Jew, she exudes contradictions both visually and aurally.

2006 marks the advent of her third album, Begin To Hope, her first on a major label. It's a delicious mix of bombastic beats, tinkly piano and wailing vocals. Samson is a heartbreaking account of the Biblical hero's forgotten first love, ignored by history and abandoned by Samson, ('The history books forgot about us and the Bible didn't mention us'). It ripples and soars through its tragic tale to a universally applicable chorus, which makes it one of the strongest on the album.

Spektor's sound is an amalgam of all of her ethnic sources, with a dash of Kate Bush, Tori Amos and Patti Smith, though those comparisons are old and obvious. Spektor somehow manages to combine her heritage with accomplished singer-songwriting worthy of Randy Newman.

Born in Moscow in 1980, Spektor is the daughter of a photographer and amateur violinist and a music professor in a Russian conservatory. The family left the Soviet Union in 1989, during Perestroika, via Austria and Italy, before settling in New York. In an interview with Womanrock, she cited her Russian heritage as a very important part of her personality: 'I'm a Russian Jew. It's a very big part of who I am. It's a very specific thing, being a Russian Jew. I'm very lucky. It's a rich culture. Plus I have the Russian language so I can read all of the literature as well. I now have such a clear division in my life between when I was in Russia and when I'm here. It's really cool.'

She also talks about being one of the first Russians in the Bronx for 20 years. 'I was reading a lot in English. I wasn't really talking to Russians so much,' she says. It is this heritage which is apparent on her 2004 album Soviet Kitsch, whose cover features Spektor in a Soviet navy cap swigging from a bottle. Soviet Kitsch piqued the interest of the Strokes' Julian Casasblancas and he asked Spektor to open for the band on their European tour.

Begin To Hope was produced by Dave Kahne who has also worked with Paul McCartney and the Bangles. It draws very heavily on Spektor's ethnography but is also the first time she has recorded in her native language. 'It feels very good to sing in Russian,' says Spektor, who translates the militaristic verses of Apres Moi into Russian and French.

A big hit on the New York East Village anti-folk scene, Spektor has a large live following but has managed to avoid denting the charts too heavily until now but her latest album is attracting the attentions of critics and fans alike. Her music has also been used in TV programmes and commercials and with the advent of a European and UK tour; Regina Spektor's six-cornered star seems to be very much in the ascendant.