She caught "the music disease" at an early age, she says. "My parents made us take piano lessons. My sisters hated them, but I loved it. I moved on to voice lessons. I always knew I wanted to do something with music."

She grew up in Wisconsin, then moved to Utah to go to Brigham Young University. "I found the media-music major, and I was hooked. It does become a kind of disease — you can't stop."

Magill served an LDS mission in Portugal and than came back to Utah, where she married Jeff Heaton (she still uses her maiden name on her music). They will become the parents of their first child in July. "With all the girls in my life, you'd think I'd be having a girl — but it's a boy. I won't know how to act," she says with a laugh, but adds that she's looking forward to the "boy-thing" learning curve.

Life is all about learning, she says. "Pursuing music has given me so many opportunities to stretch as a person. The experiences that have come are much greater than my original childhood dream of singing."

Magill was named Utah's "Best of State" vocalist in 2005, and she has performed all over the United States on stage, television and radio.

Life gets crazy at times, she says, but every now and then something comes along to remind her why she's doing what she does. "I may get an e-mail from a girl telling me how one of my songs helped her, and I think 'OK, that's why I'm doing it.' That makes it so much fun."

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E-mail: carma@desnews.com