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!–paging_filter–pLast week on NBC’s singing contest, emThe Voice/em, two local contestants represented the Pacific Northwest well and gave star-quality performances that left us wanting more. a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXLQ3hnTkjA” target=”_blank”Austin Jenckes, a native of Duval, Washington/a, battled it out against his teammate and nabbed a spot in the knockout rounds. Coach Blake Shelton on why our local boy won: “Austin has this way of sounding and looking extremely passionate about what he’s doing and it’s hard not to get wrapped up into that.” img src=”/sites/default/files/newfiles/voice.jpg” style=”float: right; margin: 10px;” height=”267″ width=”400″/p
pPacific Northwest pride swelled again during last Tuesday’s episode when Tacoma native, a href=”http://www.nbc.com/the-voice/artists/stephanie-anne-johnson/” target=”_blank”Stephanie Anne Johnson/a, performed her soulful version of The Band Perry’s emDone/em. Although she didn’t win her battle round against Olivia Henken, Coach Cee Lo Green used his last steal without hesitation, taking Johnson from Christina Aguilera’s team and giving her another chance to compete. Cee Lo read our minds when he said that he’s “looking forward to seeing what she can do in the future.” We can’t wait to see how she will use her soulful style to transform other songs./p
pAustin and Stephanie have kept us on the edge of our seats during the battle rounds. Up next? The knockout rounds. Cheer them on tonight at 9 p.mstrong./strong/p