This Career Brought to You by a TV Commercial

Nikka Costa had no visions of stardom last year when a Tommy Hilfiger jeans ad featured her percussive, optimistic tune “Like a Feather.”

Indeed, she was as surprised as anyone when viewer interest became so strong that the spot was run endlessly on MTV and VH1. Now the soulful funk rocker finds herself among the growing ranks of emerging artists whose careers have gotten a boost from television commercials.

“I didn’t realize how much people actually listen to the songs in commercials,” Costa, 29, says. “I was quite surprised that people were e-mailing Tommy Hilfiger and asking what song that was. But it was great to get that kind of reaction.”

The petite redhead is used to getting a reaction. As a child she had a pop career overseas, due to a combination of strong voice and famous father--producer-arran- ger-composer Don Costa, who worked with stellar singers such as Dinah Washington, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand and Frank Sinatra (Nikka’s godfather).

But her U.S. profile was nil when the Hilfiger ad came out. Indeed, she had yet to release her U.S. debut album, “Everybody Got Their Something,” which came out in May on Virgin Records. A sensual mix of vintage funk, rock and soul spiked with hip-hop and modern dance styles, the collection showcased her powerful, Chaka Khan-esque vocals, and was diverse enough to land her spots opening shows for artists ranging from Beck to Erykah Badu, Coldplay to Wyclef Jean.

“I don’t stick with one thing,” says Costa, who brings her first headlining tour to the House of Blues in West Hollywood on Saturday. “I wanted to be able to experiment.”

Her lyrics tend toward personal musings in such numbers as “Tug of War” and romantic travails in such tracks as the scathing “Hope It Felt Good.”

“I don’t really make up stories, but sometimes I’ll have a cup of coffee with a friend, and she’ll say, ‘And then, he did this.’ And I’m like, ‘Really? Well, let me just write that down,’” Costa says, laughing.

Doing what she wants is important to Costa. Although she says her parents never forced her, her early success depended on doing what others wanted. At age 5, she crooned with Don Ho on a Christmas recording her dad produced. She started making records at 7 after an appearance with her father’s orchestra in Milan. Her albums were popular in Europe, Israel and South and Central America.

When Don Costa died in 1983, some expected 10-year-old Nikka to simply soldier on. “I had just finished a record, and I had to go tour it,” she recalls. “It just was a gross experience. The media was really wanting to capitalize on his death, and [see me] sing songs about it. I was like, ‘I just want to be normal and forget about this.’ So I did.”

After her hiatus, she decided to give music another try at 13, but it still wasn’t satisfying. “I made this horrific Eurotrash record because I had to fulfill a contract,” she says. “The people I worked with were just horrible. So I was like, ‘See ya.’”

After graduating from high school, Costa again pursued a musical career--this time on her own terms. Moving to Australia, she put a band together and began writing songs. “I started figuring out who I was, as a person and an artist,” she says. She made an impact Down Under, then was signed to Cheeba Sound, a Virgin Records affiliate that is home to neo-soul pioneer D’Angelo.

Along with winning fans, “Everybody Got Their Something” was recently nominated by a panel of musicians, critics and industry tastemakers for the inaugural Virgin Megastore Shortlist Prize for Artistic Achievement in Music, a genre-busting award modeled after England’s Mercury Music Prize.

“I was really flattered to be considered in that way with my thing,” she says, laughing. She was also amused to learn that one criterion for being nominated was having an album that had sold fewer than 500,000 copies. “It was such a dis to our record companies,” she says. “It’s like being nominated for the Best Kept Secret Award.”

Costa is hardly that obscure now, but she shows no sign of letting any encouragement go to her head. If anything, her early experiences have made her that much more appreciative of her current trajectory.

“When I was a kid, it was all more of a fluke,” she says. “Now it’s nice to be able to make the decisions for myself, and to know I worked really hard to make things happen.”

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Nikka Costa, Saturday at the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 11:30 p.m. $20. (323) 848-5100.