If you haven’t heard, Adele has rescheduled her previously cancelled North American tour dates, and added a few more to boot. The announcement comes as she recovers from a serious bout of laryngitis that forced the singer to return home to England and rest her vocal cords under doctor’s orders.

Posting on her website about her continuing convalescence, Adele says she’s used her forced time-off to get back to cooking and “sorting things out into neat piles,” while also discovering the joys of both 30 Rock and Beyoncé’s I Am… World Tour DVD.

Besides spending time with Sasha Fierce, Adele’s also been listening to a fair bit of others’ music, and called out fellow British singer-songwriter Alex Clare‘s “Hands Are Clever.” “It’s my favorite song at the moment. His voice is brilliant and this song makes me so happy!”

I heard Alex Clare’s soulful, bass-centric music for the first time while visiting the Island Records UK site recently, where I was taken by a different track, “Treading Water.” His forthcoming debut, The Lateness Of The Hour, is produced by Diplo and Switch, aka Major Laser, who lent their “Pon de Floor” beat to Beyoncé for “Run The World (Girls).”

Neither “Treading Water” nor “Hands Are Clever” are out in the U.S. at the moment, but two of Clare’s other tunes, “Too Close” and “Up All Night” have made their way to our shores. I prefer the menacing “Too Close,” whose guitar plucks sound like Mirwais-era Madonna. Interestingly, Clare’s video shares a couple of things in common with Adele’s clip for “Rolling In The Deep,” which is #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a seventh consecutive week.

In addition to giving her seal of approval to Alex Clare’s “Hands Are Clever,” Adele also mentioned Quadron’s “Pressure” and Example’s “Changed The Way You Kissed Me,” both of which deserve their own posts.

Purchase Alex Clare – “Too Close” via iTunes.