Looking for a set of sprightly tunes to improve your mood? Not here - but not a problem, with so much to recommend in this fourth album from Lisbon's Ana Moura. It's all fado, Portugal's centuries-old song form of inherent longing. (Five of its 17 tracks are even fados about fado, starting with the title track, "Take Me to a Fado House.") Poetic lyrics are sung with heartrending emotion to the spare accompaniment of acoustic guitar and Portuguese guitar, the latter a steel 12-stringed instrument with a fat, teardrop-shaped body.

Moura, an erstwhile twentysomething rock singer, is a natural fadista with a smoky alto, achieving an earthier feel than revered fado superstars such as the late Amália Rodrigues and current crossover sensation Mariza. Some bass grounds the arrangements of producer/principal songwriter Jorge Fernando, but Moura's brooding, exquisite delivery is what communicates most (and the CD booklet's lyric translations help). In an older tune such as "Fado of the Waters," her brooding intonation amply expresses the ultimately cathartic sadness: "Under falling raindrops/ Falling like a fringe of my song/ I drench my life . . . My song is rinsed clean."