New Faces Of 1996

AT THE SECOND-CHANCE prom, when grown-up lonely hearts and couples who've learned to hate each other take another stab at romance, Dan Zanes will be the house band. The scruffy former leader of the Del Fuegos, a ga-rage-soul band that partied itself into oblivion in 1989, Zanes, 34, is starting over with "Cool Down Time" (Private Music), his remarkable solo debut. Produced with bluesy minimalism by Mitchell Froom and written by Zanes with an astute eye for detail, "Cool Down Time" filters fuzzed-out riffs and slow-dance sentiments into a collection of songs about redemption. It opens with an AIDS test that turns out negative, and cautiously gathers hope from there. "I figured I had a little story to tell, so I was telling it as best I could," Zanes says. "I went from feeling horrible to feeling good." Zanes and his wife live in New York with their daughter, Anna, 1. "I woke up yesterday morning, and she started tugging at my hair," he says. "I rolled over and she pointed at the stereo and said, 'Tunes'." At that moment, he felt great.

TAMIA

A Slinky Young Diva Puts a Move on Our Hearts

WHEN TAMIA WANTS SOMEthing, she doesn't have to say please. "I want you right here, right now," she commands in "You Put a Move on My Heart," from Quincy Jones's album "Q's Jook Joint." "Lay by my side, sugar! Thrill me tonight." So what if she doesn't play nice? Tamia, 19, is getting everything she wants. "You Put a Move," her first single, hit the R&B top 20. Her voice carries traces of Aretha's authority and Mariah's flexibility. And now she's signed a deal with Quincy's label, Qwest, and started work on her own album. "19 years old y'all, she's got it all," he writes in the "Jook Joint" liner notes. "The range, the sound, the identification, the soul."