RICHLY DESERVED IS the acclaim laid before the San Francisco Bay Area's recent class of singer-songwriters, who've all done so much to bring new life to what some cynics thought was an exhausted art form. Jolie Holland has sweet, soulful, down-home appeal and a knack for an irresistible hook; Devendra Banhart packs the waify mystique of a cross-cultural Nick Drake or Syd Barrett; Joanna Newsom's got bags and bags of quirk to back her insinuating melodies. Each overcomes decades of cliché with their unique voices and genuine compositional talent.

But where, amid all the accolades, magazine cover stories, and star-powered recording contracts, does that leave Dawn "the Faun" McCarthy, the force behind the band Faun Fables? I saw her for the first time in the late '90s at the Paradise Lounge, where, decked out in a pastoral sundress and joined by a flute-playing, white-linen-suit-wearing Nils Frykdahl (then of Idiot Flesh), she proceeded to yodel her way into my heart with a set of haunting, octave-vaulting folk melodies.

A half dozen years later, at a release party for Faun Fables' new CD, Family Album, on Drag City – which is also releasing 1999's Early Song and reissuing 2001's Mother Twilight (A Traveller's Tale) – at the Bottom of the Hill Aug. 12, Faun Fables once again conquered my music-fan heart, and nary a yodel was to be heard. Joined, as always, by the freakishly talented Frykdahl, McCarthy has evolved from a pensive, swooning songstress to a gale-force art diva. With a husky, fluid alto that would give Carla Bozulich (Geraldine Fibbers, Scarnella) a run for her alterna-goddess money, McCarthy eased her way into a set that would ultimately end up blowing the doors off the joint. Thematically, the material tended toward the dark, but it remained sumptuously performed – the haunted Appalachian and Old English derivations were, by turns, wistful, mournful, furious, and exuberant; offset with thrilling vocal arabesques; and flush with an ambiguous but seething sensuous power.

The show got off to a decidedly lighter start with Obo Martin doing a set that recalled Wally Pleasant, with his bright tenor, bouncy guitar, and winkingly ironic lyrics. His penultimate tune, a smirky little ditty about self-destruction that really shouldn't have been as charming as it turned out to be, was offset by a remarkable a cappella closing hymnal/ballad about the boundary-dissolving powers of psychedelic drugs.

Jane Brody followed – a talented finger-style guitarist whose work teetered between intriguingly mythic poetics and more mundane Melissa Etheridge-isms. Her cover of Crosby, Stills, and Nash's "Guinnevere" set the stage for a between-set duet with McCarthy, in which the pair covered a series of pop hits, including the inevitable, if heartfelt, Stevie Nicks empowerment tearjerker, "Landslide." (The song was admirably countered later in the evening by a cover of Richard Thompson's "Valerie.")

The last spot on a Bottom of the Hill show can be the most challenging for any band – audience attrition will sap any performer's morale. But when the full Faun Fables ensemble took to the stage, the audience, if anything, expanded and remained rapt for the length of the hour-plus set. McCarthy crooned and whispered, belted and roared, and somehow I think she barely scratched the surface of a vocal repertoire that could evoke Dagmar Krause in one instant and Sandy Denny the next.

Throughout it all, Frykdahl was her anchor, a not-so-silent partner providing amazingly lush, harmonically vibrant flute, pure-toned pennywhistle, remarkably nimble nylon-string guitar vamps, chunky electric six-string flourishes, and even a clattering, clanging turn on a homemade lapsteel "percussion guitar" invented by his Sleepytime Gorilla Museum bandmate Dan Rathbun. His harmonies, like her lead vocals, suggested oceans of musical blessings that were barely tapped yet overwhelming – they were at once as coarse and strangled as a poisonous snake, yet tonally flawless. When the pair finally opened the floodgates with the closing number, "Eyes of a Bird," the slow-building crescendo was tooth-rattling.

One fan in the audience told me Faun Fables' new CD made him "weep on Muni, twice!" – once with sadness and once with joy. Perhaps her artistry is a bit too fragmented for fans of life's sweet, simple melodies, perhaps her poetic turns are a touch too unsparing for those who prefer their allusions merely wistful, but when she makes a connection with a fan, it's for keeps. (Josh Wilson)