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BY JIM FARBER

DAILY NEWS MUSIC WRITER

Friday, May 25th 2007

Amel Larrieux puts her own stamp on pop classics.

There's a giggle in Amel Larrieux's voice, a lightness that renders everything she sings playful and free. "I feel a little whimsical most of the time," she affirms. "That's what keeps me feeling creatively naked and open."

For her new album, the singer chose to open the classic American songbook, a move that initially sounds cynical and obvious. Is there anyone, save Ludacris, who hasn't issued an album of standards lately? Yet on this longtime alterna-soul singer's "Lovely Standards," she gives the common classics - from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Duke Ellington - her own perfumed aura. Tomorrow, Larrieux will bring that spritz of a sound to B.B. King's for two shows, at 8 and 10:30 p.m.

Larrieux's flirty singing has just the right tone for the songs' wry lyrics. "They don't write lines anymore like 'If I were a salad/ I'd be splashing my dressing,'" she says with a laugh. (She's citing Frank Loesser's "If I Were a Bell"). But the singer didn't treat these flip songs with the brassy approach many others take. "We wanted it to be more intimate, with close singing," she says. "That way, it felt natural."

The approach suited Larrieux's style. Growing up in Greenwich Village, she first came to public attention as the chic voice for the light dance-soul group Groove Theory. Its song "Tell Me" became a top-10 hit in 1995, but the band wasn't able to deliver a follow-up. Larrieux went solo in 2000 with "Infinite Possibilities."

Four years passed between that album (on Epic) and her next solo work, "Bravebird," which appeared on an indie imprint Blisslife, run by her husband, Laru Larrieux. The music on that CD, and her next, 2006's terrific "Morning," skipped gaily through a fusion of styles, from Erykah Badu-like hip-hop soul to West African and Indian music. "I can't just do black and white," says the singer. "Even in something as mundane as a menu, I have to try something different."

With three solo albums behind her, Larrieux finally felt established enough as a writer to risk an album of covers. She also wanted the project to help get her booked at jazz festivals and heard on jazz stations. "The landscape of jazz is changing," Larrieux says. "The legends are leaving and singers like Lizz Wright, Norah Jones and Madeleine Peyroux are now considered jazz."

Larrieux has drawn notice for more than her music. She's beautiful enough to model. While she admits she did aspire to that career as a child, as an adult she fashioned herself after her mother, an artist and historian. "I wanted to be as smart and prolific as she," says Larrieux. "I wanted to be heard, as opposed to being seen." Now she can be both.