Daltile Rittenhouse Square is about $2 per sf, uninstalled. Several people on here have used it.

You can combine the Daltile subways with glass tile accents. We added our glass accent tiles randomly but others have added glass tiles in a straight line or at certain intervals. It will all depend on your layout, where the outlets and light switches are, etc., and how expensive the glass tiles are. Look through the finished kitchen blog and the backsplash slideshow. There are wonderful ideas and beautiful kitchens there.

This backsplash was made from plain stock white 1.50 a foot 4 1/4" tiles with dots cut from 4 1/4" blue tiles. You won't have something that's amazing, but at the same time, it DOES look nice:

One other thought-- I disagree with your GC. The backsplash is the one thing you can wait on, if you wish. So long as it's painted and the joint between the countertop and wall caulked, you're fine. Just as an example, that house pictured above was four years old when I installed that.

I have seen some beautiful backsplashes with only 4x4 tiles set diamond style. You can use a tumbled tile for a softer look. If you lose all the border tiles, its more affordable, and pretty timeless IMHO!

I would say that you SHOULD wait on it. Get those cabinets and counter top in, consider your wall color options and then settle on a tile. Or, at least, I wish I had done that!

I like our tile, and we chose it for good reasons (blend with nearby brick chimney wall), but our assumptions about how well it would blend with the cabinets were off. Problem? Ordered tile (online) before cabinets arrived. Until they were installed, it wasn't clear that the ivory tones of the tile would not work well with the red tones of the maple. We agonized over wall colors until finally settling on BM (Aura) Masada:

Here is a link that might be useful: Modwalls.com

There's a gorgeous kitchen on the finished kitchens blog with a backsplash of 4x4 Home Depot (I think) caramel and black ceramic tile set diagonally. Looks fantastic. If you're not into checkerboard, one color of low-end 4x4s in a favorite color set diagonally or in alternating running bond (like subway) would also look extremely nice and not just like everyone else's these days.

I've been trying to search through and just cannot find it BUT there were some very nice, simple backsplashes posted. One in particular had just plain white ceramic tiles, I believe set on a diagonal ubt not even sure of that, with the really nice trim (I dont know the terminology sorry) curved tiles at the bottom and maybe a few decor tiles interspersed a little bit. It struck me how simple yet really special looking it was. Of course now I cannot rememember anythign else about it except I did comment on it and whoever it was, reiterated that it was just plain standard tiles.
I am sorry I cannot dig it up (for selfish reasons too- I w ould love to see it again because it erally made an impression.)
Maybe someone has a clue as to what I am thinking of? I surely don't.