“Hi, I’m Amy Winehouse and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi Amy!”

That’s basically the first impression we got of the somewhat-tragic R&B singer Amy Winehouse when she dropped her infamous single “Rehab” in the spring of 2007. Now known to most Americans as the most soulful hot mess around, Winehouse actually used to have a more wholesome side.

Four years before we’d even heard of her or her drinking problem, she released her low-key, jazzy debut Frank in the U.K. Frank eventually managed to land on our shores by the time Back to Black blew up. It’s a bit of a shame it took so long, since the album’s most popular song, the gold-digger hater anthem “Fuck Me Pumps,”  is Winehouse at her songwriting best: “Don’t be too upset / If they call you a skank / ‘Cuz like the news everyday you get pressed.”

Of course, Winehouse is probably rolling in dough while she’s rolling something else. But not every aspiring singer-songwriter struggles with the arduous process of breaking into commercial radio or hipster circles in the U.S. Here are a few who got it right that might have slipped under your radar.

VV BROWN

Last week VV Brown’s “Shark In the Water” was the free song of the week on iTunes. For pop fans who have sought out her previous singles “Leave!” and “Crying Blood,” the upbeat drums and big pop hooks of her songs came as little surprise. Much like American singer Janelle Monáe, her closest domestic equivalent, Brown has the right combination of mainstream sensibility and welcomed quirkiness. “Shark In the Water” is no exception: with a strummed guitars and a powerhouse of a chorus, it’s one of the rare iTunes give-aways that is worth downloading. And, at $5.99, her album, Travelling Like the Light, is quite the steal (especially since the price of purchasing all the songs individually would cost you over $15 – curse you, dollar-twenty-nine singles!).

ROBYN

Not only does Robyn deserve to be a megastar — there’s few who can make such shameless, sugary pop songs sound so smart and timeless — she almost was a megastar. Robyn worked with Swedish songwriter-producer Max Martin, who’d later deliver “…Baby One More Time” to Britney Spears around two years later, and made a decent dent in American radio in her early days. But when she started to get a little more creative, like her collaboration with fellow Swedes The Knife, “Who’s That Girl,” her label shook its finger. So like any crafty businesswoman would, Robyn ditched the record execs to start her own company, Konnichiwa Records, and hasn’t looked back since. After initially releasing her eponymous fourth album in 2005, Robyn embarked on an international campaign that took over Sweden, then the rest of Europe, and then finally, in 2008, the U.S. with a trail left-field pop hits like “Be Mine!,”  “Handle Me,” and “With Every Heartbeat.”  As for 2010, she’s been working with M.I.A. collaborator Diplo on her fifth record, expected sometime in the first half of the year.

LA ROUX

While some U.K. artists take years to break into the states — international pop star Kylie Minogue, who’s been recording number one singles since the late 1980s, only went on her first U.S. tour this year — La Roux didn’t have that problem. The electro duo, made up of lead singer Elly Jackson (dubbed the Tilda Swinton of pop music) and songwriting partner Ben Langmaid, released their debut album back home in June of 2009. But with the success of the synth-tastic “Bulletproof,” the band was able to release the album in the states three months later and was selling out shows in Chicago by the start of the month. Coincidentally, La Roux, like V.V. Brown, Robyn and Amy Winehouse, also got some help from a free iTunes download. Maybe if Kylie had just given her tunes away we’d still have her stuck in our heads.