In this era of “American Idol,” when pop stars are produced factory-style on a televised assembly line, there’s something refreshing about Missy Higgins and her path to stardom.

The 21-year-old songstress is a sensation in her native Australia, and she earned national acclaim through a different kind of contest. The first song she ever wrote won a competition hosted by a Melbourne radio station.

In 2002, Higgins was invited to record “All for Believing,” which quickly became the station’s most requested track. Record labels soon came knocking for more.

But the singer, who was 17 at the time, opted not to hop on the express train to exposure. Instead, she went backpacking. She and a friend planned long before her win for a post-graduation adventure across Europe, so the studio would just have to wait.

She spent most of 2002 exploring and writing.

It should be no surprise then that her debut CD, “The Sound of White,” carries a gravity and precision more fitting a singer twice her age. Comparisons to Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan seem obligatory, and she shares with both those singers a soothing voice and a taste for dark subject matter.

If the lyrics are occasionally clunky and obvious, such missteps can be attributed to youth. She was barely 21 when the album was recorded.

American critics are already glowing in their reviews.

DESPITE THE GAINS, Higgins hasn’t quite penetrated the pop-culture consciousness of fickle Americans. When she arrives in Atlanta on July 30, she comes as the opening act for Howie Day — another newbie but one more aligned with the alt-rock end of the dial.

One place Higginsattracted attention is with scores of wishful lesbians, thanks to favorable reviews in magazines like Curve and rampant Internet speculation about her sexual orientation.

The new CD’s Lilith Fair sensibilities probably explain the lesbian rumors, though a few suggestive lyrics also fuel the flames of innuendo. On “The Special Two,” a spare piano ballad, she questions her childhood dreams of someday becoming a wife and declares an unbreakable bond with an unidentified soul mate. “Scar,” the first single, includes what some wishful listeners label a confession about a same-sex fling.

But such conjecture really only detracts from the album’s merits, which are considerable. Besides, at least one music blog has her salivating over a very male bassist. Sorry, girls.

TYPICAL OF A TEENAGE POET, the songs on “The Sound of White” deal largely with frustrated relationships and angst-ridden co-dependence. Wounded girls surface often on the album, which is probably not intended as a nod to songwriters like Amos but which gives the project a certain chilly resonance.

In “The River,” a song ostensibly about child abuse, Higgins repeatedly menacingly reminds listeners, “Somebody’s bed will never be warm again.” But “The Sound of White” is less Portishead and more Aimee Mann, the kind of CD that lodges itself in the lower reaches of the listener’s cerebellum and stays stuck there for weeks.

Many tracks here would probably work fine as the closing credits on an episode of “Gilmore Girls,” and Fox already used “Scar” in a commercial for “The OC.”

It’s got to be tough being the current Australian import who made a tremendous splash at home before cautiously venturing stateside. For every success story (Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman) there’s an equally obvious embarrassment (Yahoo Serious, Paul Hogan).

But Higgins appears better than being dismissed as just another fad or disposable teeny bopper act. She’s certainly light years beyond the Ashlee Simpson school of celebrity, and proof that the “American Idol” effect hasn’t completely ruined pop music.