Plink's icy electronica is so cold you can practically see singer Kate Cronin's breath coming off the group's emotionally distant debut CD, The Sleeping Lines. Arctic floes of synthesized sound drift past a voice that sounds like it was dipped in liquid nitrogen and programmed beats are delivered with calculated precision. The result is music that's both hauntingly beautiful and bloodless.

Over the course of 15 months, Plink's Scott Evans and Brad Derrick composed The Sleeping Lines by sending computer files to each other over the Internet. Perhaps it's this long-distance relationship that contributes to the record's sterile environment. Cronin's lovely, ethereal voice tries to breathe life into some of the more comatose tracks, like dead zones "Turning Around" and "Frame", but falls short. It's not her fault.

Before joining Evans and Derrick, Cronin sang with some of the Washington D.C. area's preeminent choral ensembles, and her experience shows. When "Undo" crescendos, she soars with it. On the almost jazzy, remembrance piece "Mary Antonita" she sounds appropriately fragile and lost. Unfortunately, she's also called upon to deliver inane spoken word pieces in "Frame" and "Thanks For Coming" that could have been lifted from some trashy, gothic romance novel. Nevertheless, Cronin's talent is unmistakable. Sounding like a witch's brew of Portishead's Beth Gibbons, Sarah McLachlan, Dido and Enya, her spellbinding vocal inflections add glowing nuance to pieces that are emotionally remote.

The pace of The Sleeping Lines is mostly glacial, but there are moments when it shifts and becomes cinematic in scope, adding simulated strings and piano for sonic depth. The noir-ish "Remade" sounds like Portishead. Elsewhere, dark, spiraling masses of electronica take listeners on a trip through space. Just remember to bundle up when playing The Sleeping Lines. Otherwise, you just might catch your death of cold.