With her distinctive voice—a heavily accented, vaguely androgynous, oddly flat drone—Nico wasn't the most obvious choice for a rock 'n' roll siren. But after finding the right frameworks, she created mesmerizing music for the ages. The filigreed guitar and garage weirdness of The Velvet Underground made her a mid-'60s star, while the exquisite fragility of her folk work on 1967's Chelsea Girl launched her solo career. Subsequent forays—the baroque, harmonium-buoyed dreamscapes of The Marble Index; the otherworldly gothic swoop of Camera Obscura—reinforced her legacy as a true visionary.