Look out, Backstreet Boys and alterna-pop fans.

Hawksley Workman is out to get you. More precisely, he's out to woo you with his brand of smart, heart-on-his-sleeve romantic pop.

A relative newcomer to the Canadian music scene, Toronto-based Workman, just 24, feels he's in the right place at the right time at the moment.

If, as he contends, the music world is dominated by teen-pop acts and/or smart-aleck irony mongers, then there must be room for good, honest songwriting, right?

"I really do think it's a great time to be making music and to be making great music," he says. "I'm a firm believer that quality in music will eventually rule, even if it doesn't pay your rent for a while."

Not that Workman will have to worry about his rent for long. Since the fall release of his debut album, For Him and the Girls, the erudite singer/songwriter has become a critics' darling and his progress is being watched closely by talent scouts from both sides of the border.

Workman recently completed a Western Canada tour with college rock icon Violent Femmes, which he says exposed him to many new fans. At his recent U of M show, an ever-expanding knot of fans was drawn in by his disarming one-man show, which featured pretty melodies and almost evangelical between-song patter.

With some 30 new songs at his disposal, Workman says he's going to self-produce his next album, just as he did with For Him and the Girls, on which he played almost all the instruments.

"I was really musical when I was younger, my dad got new records in all the time and we'd listen to them and play along with them." he says.

"I was also fascinated by wordplay -- just the wonderful sound of someone who can make the language work by speaking eloquently. I got a sense and an appreciation of that quite early," he says of his lyrical prowess.

Interestingly enough, he's " not a big reader. I have to be emotionally stable enough to give myself to a book, and then it seems like I have to set aside a month to do it."