On a cold December night, Marié Digby is perched on the piano bench of a small performance space in New York City, about to launch into “Feel,” a song she says is about the low moments of being in love. As the subway momentarily roars past, Marié pauses her set to ask if anyone else in the audience “felt their ass vibrating.” The crowd laughs along as she quickly quips, “I have that effect sometimes.”

The 26-year-old singer wasn’t always so confident on stage.  Her first attempts at singing included auditioning for school musicals, where she was repeatedly rejected. “I thought I didn’t have a promising future as a singer,” she said. She quickly proved herself wrong when as a high school senior, the self-proclaimed jock and nerd took the stage for the first time to sing an original song at the school talent show. “The reaction was so moving,” she remembers. “Everyone stood up and gave a standing ovation.” Even while she went to college to study philosophy, she knew, from that moment on, that she wanted to pursue music more than anything.

It seems her gut feeling was right—Marié got her first guitar when she was 17, and although she took the free lesson that came with the purchase, she’s been self-taught ever since. Which is a pretty big accomplishment for a girl who went from a high school auditorium to a popular YouTube channel to performance venues across the world.

Her meteoric rise is due, in large part, to her ability to take matters into her own hands. After completing her first album, which her label deemed unready for release, Marié  decided to promote the album herself by covering current radio hits in simple, self-filmed videos. After posting an acoustic cover of Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” for which she is perhaps best known, her YouTube page gained millions of views. “YouTube has given me a really amazing, direct way of communicating with my fans,” Marié said. “I feel like I can say whatever I want, with no filters.” In fact, she believes she owes her success to the video-sharing website. “Without YouTube, I don’t know that I would have had this opportunity at all. I’m not the type of artist to spend years working the same album. I wanted to fast track everything, so without the internet, without a computer, I’d be in a very different situation.”

A different situation indeed. Since the Rihanna cover was posted two and a half years ago, the video has received almost 15 million views and her version was featured on MTV show “The Hills.” Driven by the online popularity, her first album, Unfold, enjoyed a successful run with song placements in “Greek,” “One Tree Hill,” and “ER.” She then released a CD of Japanese songs, and is currently on tour promoting Breathing Underwater, her most recent album that was released in September. “Breathing Underwater is a lot bolder,” she said “Unfold is a quiet, beautiful record, while Breathing Underwater takes more of a stand. I’m not afraid to voice what I feel. It feels like the natural evolution to me.”

In her moments of spare time, she continues doing what her fans love best —uploading her pared-down covers of beloved songs. Surprisingly, Marié doesn’t spend much time practicing these covers. “It’s embarrassing how little preparation there is,” she said. “I either pick the guitar or piano, look up the songs on iTunes and YouTube, play it, figure out chords, Google the lyrics, and just do it until I get it right,” she says. The 200,000 subscribers to her YouTube page can’t seem to get enough of her covers, like Beyoncé’s “Sweet Dreams” or “Fireflies” by the indie group Owl City. And unsurprisingly, Marié’s original songs are slowly becoming more popular than her covers, proving that she is a capable songwriter and artist in her own right.

Marié has no plans to stop any time soon. She recently wrapped a movie based on the recording process of Breathing Underwater, which will feature songs from the album.  And she’s already thinking about her next CD. “I want to play around with beats,” she said. “I’m interested in sounds that are unusual, with instruments from different parts of the world.” This is in part inspired by her recent tour of Asia, where she performed in cities like Manila, Singapore and Tokyo. “When I went into music, I never thought about how my ethnicity would play a role in it,” she said. “But as I got deeper and deeper into it, I got asked all the time: ‘What’s your background?’ ” (For the record, Marié is half-Japanese and half-Irish.) “I’ve become more in touch with my Asian side because I realized there are so few Asian artists who have found any kind of success here in the States,” she said. “It’s given me the added motivation to show the world that there are so many Asians with abundant amounts of musical talent. I hope I can be one of the people to open that door.”

This coming from someone who still sees herself as “that dorky kid in middle school who so badly wanted to be known for something great.” If the confident charmer performing on stage in New York is any indication, Marié is well on her way to opening doors for dorky kids everywhere.

Photos Courtesy of Mary Rozzi