Kim English, whose melismatic vocals and spiritual perspective anchored more than a dozen house-music hits that reverberated in dance clubs beginning in the 1990s, died Tuesday in Chicago. She was 48.

English’s longtime manager, Vickie Markusic, confirmed the death. The specific cause was unknown, she said, but English had kidney failure and had been on dialysis for years.

Dance music’s euphoria and church music’s rapture have been conceptual relatives for years, but English’s joyful 12-inch singles often made the connection explicit, speaking plainly about her Christianity and soaring with the fervor of gospel music.

Like house music itself — a form of electronic dance music that emerged in the early 1980s — English was born in Chicago. But she became best known through her relationship with New York garage, a strain of dance music that embraced lush production and melodies more amenable to gospel and soul.

Her breakthrough was “Nite Life,” a 1994 12-inch disc given a luxurious mix by the New York garage producers Masters at Work and a harder-edged remix by Armand Van Helden. It became an enduring club staple, with English singing like Dorothy Gale back in Kansas but still dreaming of Oz: “I’m trying hard to find this place again/Lord knows, I’m glad at least I’ve been.”

From 1999 to 2007, with singles like “Unspeakable Joy” and “Everyday,” English scored eight No.1 hits on Billboard’s club/dance chart, more than chart-topping dance notables like Daft Punk, Calvin Harris and New Order.

English was born Sept. 6, 1970, to Annie (Herron) English, a schoolteacher, and Ronald English, a corrections officer. She went to high school at Kenwood Academy in Chicago, studying under famed vocal teacher Lena McLin, whose students have also included opera baritone Mark Rucker and R. Kelly. On the list of more than 20 influences on English’s Facebook page, McLin appears first.

In the early 1990s, the Chicago house DJ Gershon Jackson brought English to the attention of the vocalist Byron Stingily of Ten City, a Chicago trio of vocalists, songwriters and producers that combined house and R&B.

“Her voice actually reminded me, very much so, of Anita Baker’s voice,” Stingily said. “And to hear that smoky alto voice on a dance song, it was just so unique and so different at the time.”

Her career as a dance diva took off when Stingily gave a copy of the Ten City/English collaboration “Nite Life” to Little Louie Vega of Masters at Work, who passed it along to the New York club label Nervous Records.

“I did know right away the song had something special,” Mike Weiss, a founder of the label, said. “And once I knew that Masters at Work were going to be doing the remix, then it really was an automatic for me.”

Masters at Work (Vega and Kenny Gonzalez, known as Kenny Dope) were in-demand remixers, and “Nite Life” was licensed to Polydor in Britain, where it hit the Top 40. In America, where house music was still an underground phenomenon, it was played at Vega’s small but influential Underground Network party at the Sound Factory Bar in Manhattan. Weiss said English’s first live performance was there, in 1994.

“And she did it in front of the key individuals and all the key tastemakers in the house music community,” he added. “She really wasn’t so comfortable onstage, and it was really putting someone in the spotlight without having had any experience in the New York community — but she did great. The song was so strong that as soon as she sang the chorus, everyone started singing along.”

The Armand Van Helden remix took “Nite Life” to another level in Europe, according to Weiss. Soon, thanks to mixes and remixes, English’s voice was being matched with house heavyweights like David Morales, Mood II Swing, François K and Todd Edwards.

Markusic said that once English’s production deal with Ten City was over, she wrote more of her own songs. Her first No.1 club hit, in 1999, was a song she co-wrote, “Unspeakable Joy,” a Maurice Johnson production full of church organs and gospel-choir harmonies. In it, English testified, “When I wake up, in the morning, gets me out of bed/Keeps me running, skipping, jumping like a little kid.”

“As her career and her writing got more developed, she did push more and more toward the religious base,” Weiss said. “She also wanted to have the word ‘God’ in the songs. I’m very open-minded when it comes to religion, but I did feel like having ‘God’ in a song all of a sudden, you might limit the audience a little bit.”

Markusic said that for English, religion had been inseparable from music “Every single one of the songs that she’s ever put out, whether people know it or not, they’re all related to God.”

English is survived by her parents; her son, Christopher Raymond; and her brothers, Eric, Richard and Ronald. Her marriage to Kevin Raymond ended in divorce.

After her last No.1 single, “My Destiny,” in 2007, English became a full-time student at Purdue University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in child and family services and joined the historically black sorority Zeta Phi Beta. She remained active in both music and church, singing in the choir of the Family Christian Center megachurch in Munster, Indiana.

“Kim’s mission has always been to minister to people through music,” Markusic said. “I’ve seen some amazing stories. I’ve been in situations where I’ve been in a club and had one of the club kids come up crying to Kim about how she saved her life from suicide.”

Stingily put it this way: “She didn’t want to do any music that was not uplifting.”