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The Plainview singer-songwriter balances her love of both country and rock, which she has combined into "Long Island Country."

"It's country," she says, calling from Nashville, where she was making the industry rounds during CMA Week last month. "But it has an edge."

Even her new video, the sweet "Somebody's Baby," which debuted on AOL's country channel, The Boot, has a New Yorker's strength to it. "I just had an immediate connection to the song," she says, adding that she used footage from her own life in the video, which she shot in Nashville. "I have two teenagers, but I will always consider them my baby. I speak to my mom six or seven times a day, and I know she'll always consider me her baby. Everyone has someone they're close to that they feel this way about."

The song, which is the title track of Matassa's "Somebody's Baby" EP due out Dec. 3, reflects the way she chooses material she doesn't write. "I can only sing about things I'm close to," she says, adding that she hopes to release a new album in the spring. "The songs have to touch me. If I didn't write it, I have to have felt that way. It has to feel real to me."

Another part of Matassa's reality is that as well as an incredibly busy singer, she's also an incredibly busy mom. She decided to skip the glitzy CMA Awards ceremony that crowns CMA Week in favor of returning to Plainview to see her son in his first talent show.

"I have to juggle being a mom and a country artist," she says. "It doesn't get any more real than that."

Contact The Long Island Sound at glenn.gamboa @newsday.com or follow @ndmusic on Twitter