It’s hardly news to note that Nashville “country” music has long been bastardized by the musical tenets (the honeyed production and precious emotions) of '70s SoCal rock—just listen to vintage Linda Ronstadt and Faith Hill side-by-side. But with its rural, regional and gospel roots set deeper into the fabric of its sound, bluegrass seemed more impregnable to such imprecations.

Still true, but only by degrees. Like country music before it, bluegrass is more slowly but still surely being gussied up, Californicated for a wider commercial audience. While purists grit their teeth, the rest of us can countenance the sell-out: Some of these hybrids are really quite enjoyable.

Take Sara Watkins, for example. Born and raised in Santa Monica, the 27-year-old fiddle player was a longtime member of the trio Nickel Creek with her guitar-playing brother Sean and mandolinist Chris Thile. Their first record was produced by Allison Krause, whose beautiful music became the Trojan Horse that infiltrated and commercialized bluegrass. And although Nickel Creek has always displayed some serious bluegrass influences in its music over the course of four albums (including a disc’s worth of corny cowboy tunes), band members perhaps shrewdly referred to it as “progressive acoustic” music, and covered the Jackson Five and Weezer to drive home the point.

Last week, Watkins released her first, eponymous, solo record, and tonight and Thursday night she’ll be performing at the Dakota (an erstwhile jazz club that’s also aggravated purists with its expanded musical offerings). The new disc incorporates the diverse tastes of Nickel Creek and The Mutual Admiration Society (the latter an ensemble that included Led Zeppelin drummer John Paul Jones, years before Krauss bagged Grammys with Led Zep vocalist Robert Plant), with an inevitable extra dash of Watkins’ impish, singer-songwriter vocal sensibility. She covers old-time yodeler Jimmie Rodgers (the “Singing Brakeman”) and the bluegrass vet John Hartford, dips into Nickel Creek-style bluegrass on her original instrumental, “Jefferson,” but also plays tunes by contemporary singer-songwriters like Jon Brion and David Garza.

Check out a meaty sampling of her new material (including the Brion and Hartford covers, and another fiddle instrumental, “Freiderick”) on her MySpace page. And if you scroll down to the videos on the left border of the page, there is great YouTube video of Watkins doing “Different Drum”—Linda Ronstadt’s first hit.

Sara Watkins at the Dakota Jazz Club + Restaurant, today and Thursday, April 15 and 16, 7 p.m., $16-$20.