Birdy’s quiet, but she isn’t fragile: On our cross-continental call one early August evening, the singer/songwriter makes this clear to me. Throughout our conversation, the 27-year-old musician—aka ...

Birdy’s Young Heart pulses with a familiar sorrow. Battered and bruised, the towering 16-track record, her first in five years, carries a faint whisper of Joni Mitchell’s transcendent Blue. Birdy ...