Vega began working on Beauty & Crime at home, with guitar and Garageband, but soon enlisted the help of engineer Britt Myers to help with her work on the computer. They moved to his studio, exchanged ideas and developed tracks before British musician-producer Jimmy Hogarth (Sia, Corinne Bailey Rae, KT Tunstall) came on board and Vega resumed work at larger studios in New York and London. Hogarth, whose work with Sia particularly impressed Vega, “had a sure sense of instinct. He was so young that he was open to different ways of making a record, he didn’t have a formula. I liked that he recorded in analog then fed it into the digital machine. The album has the warmth of analog but the technology of the digital world.” Among the players joining Vega and members of her touring band are guitarists Gerry Leonard (David Bowie, Rufus Wainwright) and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth (those are his ringing guitar lines on “Angel’s Doorway”).