This ain't CrüeFest.

The popular singer-songwriter-based Hotel Cafe Tour makes a stop in South Salt Lake this week, and for the first time, the recurring show features all women.

"There's a nice little sisterhood going on," said headliner Rachael Yamagata.

"This tour is an old-fashioned revue," said Lenka.

"It's the rebirth of the Lilith Fair," said Emily Wells.

The tour gets its name from the Hotel Cafe, one of the premier singer-songwriter venues in the U.S. The Los Angeles venue sponsors a tour of its favorite artists, now in its fourth year.

Three of the women said in interviews with The Salt Lake Tribune that they're excited about the latest incarnation of the tour.

Rachael Yamagata » The 31-year-old singer-songwriter is equally adept on the piano and acoustic guitar. A fourth-generation Japanese-American on her father's side and of Italian and German ancestry on her mother's side, the Virginia native just released her second album, a double disc titled "Elephants … Teeth Sinking Into Heart."

There are two sets of songs, Yamagata explained. One set, called "Elephants," is intimate and ballad-based, much like her first album, "Happenstance," released in 2004. The second set, "Teeth Sinking Into Heart," features Yamagata's rock side. Despite its dual nature, all of the songs were recorded at the same time, she said.

Record-label frustrations is the reason "Happenstance" and the new album were separated by a four-year gap, which Yamagata recognizes as often career-killing for new artists.

"I made sure to keep myself busy," she said. "I learned other sides of the business, and I self-managed myself. … When you can't go out and fish, you mend your nets."

Lenka » The 30-year-old Australian singer-songwriter, whose parents immigrated from Yugoslavia, has a minor top-40 hit in the Salt Lake radio market with "The Show," a song that features her youthful voice and stripped-down, whimsical instrumentation.

"[The Hotel Cafe] has been quite an important place for me," Lenka said. "I performed my first gig there, and performed there for the first time with my new band."

Lenka, like the other artists, isn't allowed to bring her own band on this tour. There will be a common backing band for all artists, with each performer getting two 20-minute sets.

Emily Wells » At this point in her young career, Wells is one of the most musically ambitious performers on the tour. The 26-year-old, based in L.A., is a classically trained violinist and multi-instrumentalist who blends orchestral arrangements with avant-garde pop. A regular at the Hotel Cafe, she will be a whirling dervish onstage, trying to re-create the dense musical backing heard on her album, "The Symphonies."

"My only backing with be beats from a drum machine," Wells said. "A lot of things will end up being looped. I trust the songs are still there."

She began learning violin at 4 and now plays banjo, organ, synth, xylophone, metallophone, glockenspiel, ukulele and guitar.

"I love to play anything I can get my hands on," she said, but added that she can't play any horns, despite her horn-playing father. "I'm inefficient at making any wind."

Disinheriting the wind is another matter.