UNDERGROUND GIRL

Lavender Diamond singer Becky Stark finds good vibes in Hollywood as a resident of Tom Hanks's submerged City of Ember.

Mary Lyn Maiscott

SCREENBEAT

Becky Stark can't believe her cinematic luck. "It's perfectly in line with my ideals, and it's a Hollywood movie!" she says of City of Ember, produced by Tom Hanks and directed by her friend Gil Kenan—"who I last saw at this underground club called the Smell." In the film, due out next fall, Stark plays one of the Believers, a singing troupe that brings hope to a town that's literally underground. Stark sees her role on Earth in similar terms: to promote peace and goodwill. As the alluringly ditzy, ethereal-voiced front woman for Lavender Diamond—who perform their folk-pop in the indie science-fiction pic One Day Like Rain—the 30-year-old radiates neo-hippie vibes; the L.A. band's debut album is called Imagine Our Love. But Stark wants her message on the silver screen: having composed the Believers' songs for City of Ember, she's now writing a "green" movie musical "about finding true love—and about the weather."