I love Vashti Bunyan's singing. And I also love Kate Rusby's singing. I've never thought of them as sounding similar, but I guess they both sound little-girlish. They tend to use a different tempo and a different sort of energy and projection, but the cute little-girlish sound may be part of what I like about both of them. When I introduced a friend to Kate Rusby, he said, "She sounds like an angel!" Maybe you could also describe Vashti Bunyan's singing as angelic.

Another of my favorite singers, who also seems to me to have a little-girl voice, is April Verch. She doesn't sing usually, just plays the fiddle, but I love it when she does sing. And maybe there's some of that same quality in some of my other favorite singers, such as Iris Dement.

On the other hand, I also love Kate Wolf's singing (someone mentioned her), and I don't think there's anything little-girlish about her voice. The same goes for Gillian Welch, Rosalie Sorrels, Emmylou Harris, and certainly Nic Jones, John Gorka, Tom Russell, and Stan Rogers.

I followed that link to find out who Saint Etienne is. Yuck. How did that come up in a forum on folk music?