The world of American roots music is no stranger to Seattle songwriter Sera Cahoone. Even though her last three albums were on Sub Pop Records and she spent years at the top of the indie charts, she’s always had a streak of Americana that ran through her music, a love of the humble folk song that bolstered her art. She’s returning now to these earliest influences with her new album, From Where I Started (to be released March 24, 2017). Growing up, Cahoone first found her voice in Colorado dive bars, backing up old blues musicians at age 12 on the drums. Her father, a Rocky Mountain dynamite salesman, took the family along to mining conferences and old honky-tonks in the state. The sounds she heard there—the twang of country crooners, cowboy boots on peanut shells—have stayed with her all the way to Seattle, where she lives now, and the seminal indie rock bands she’s been a part of in the city (Carissa’s Weird, Band of Horses). To make From Where I Started, her first new album since 2012’s Dear Creek Canyon, Cahoone traveled south to Portland to work with producer John Askew (Neko Case, Laura Gibson, Alela Diane). Askew brought together key Portland musicians like Rob Burger (Iron and Wine, Lucinda Williams), Dave Depper (Death Cab For Cutie) and Annalisa Tornfelt (Black Prairie) with Cahoone’s Seattle bandmates - Jeff Fielder (Mark Lanegan, Amy Ray) and Jason Kardong (Son Volt, Jay Farrar). The band lays a deep bedrock beneath Cahoone’s songs, supporting her arcing vocals and innovative guitar and banjo playing. The album is driven by a strong rhythmic sensibility, owed to Cahoone’s background as a drummer for indie rock bands. “A lot of my songs start as a beat, I add guitar, then lyrics at the end,” she says. “When I write songs I usually sit at my drum kit playing both drums and guitar at the same time.” From Where I Started plays on the rougher, darker edges of the traditional love song. Like any good country album, the songs here deal with love and loss, but Cahoone also knows how to surround loss with hope, to temper a sad song with a turn in the major key. The optimism of the love song “Up To Me,” buoyed by fingerpicked guitar and banjo, gives way to the weary resignation of “Taken Its Toll,” with its plaintive pedal steel and echoing vocal harmonies. “Ladybug,” is a poignant song that followed the tragic death of Cahoone’s cousin Tawnee. From Where I Started represents a refocusing for Sera Cahoone. It positions her as a songwriter beholden to the old country sounds she grew up with, a songwriter who’s always been able to deftly translate a personal perspective into a universal view. It’s an album about falling in and out of love, finding new hope, and learning that the best way to move forward is to remember where you began.

SassyBlack is a space aged singer/songwriter & producer based in Seattle, Washington. This Goddess of “electronic psychedelic soul” & “hologram funk” explores the concepts of sound through deep compositions. With roots in classical & jazz, her voice is often compared to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Erykah Badu & Georgia Anne Muldrow. Her production value and creativity is reminiscent of Roy Ayers, Pharrell & Herbie Hancock. Graduating with a Bachelors in music from Cornish College of the Arts in 2008, Black has traveled the world performing in cities such as Berlin, LA, Madrid, Barcelona, New Orleans, Lisbon, Manhattan, Milan, London, Brooklyn, Rome, Shanghai, Washington DC, Sydney & more. You may also know Black from her (now defunct) group THEESatisfaction and her appearances on both Shabazz Palaces albums Black Up & Lese Majesty all released on Sub Pop Records. In the summer of 2015 she independently released her EP “Personal Sunlight“ which garnered attention from Okayplayer, Exclaim!, Afropunk, Pitchfork & more. Her debut solo album No More Weak Dates released May 17th 2016 to great review & praise from The Fader, Loud & Quiet Magazine, Noisy, DIVA, Dummy Mag, Saint Heron, FvF & other well known media outlets. Ms. Black successfully toured European in fall of 2016 and is preparing her second solo album due in 2017.

Indie dream-folk artist, Brenda Xu (pronounced “shoo”) has been building a steady following since her arrival on the Seattle music scene a few years ago. The momentum she created with the release of her last album “For The Winter” in 2014 has led to several successful tours and song placements on MTV & Nickelodeon. Her new album, Overflow was added to KEXP‘s rotation recently, and has been receiving airplay and press coverage in countries all over the world. Compared to artists such as Daughter, Bon Iver, and Aimee Mann, her sound has been described as “treading the delicate line between washed-out ambient tones and carefully crafted acoustic arrangements.” As a DIY artist, she has successfully funded two Kickstarter campaigns to release her albums and music videos. She is touring extensively in the U.S. and Europe this year to reach a growing audience in new regions.

Dichotomy in a partnership is always tricky, but not for Seattle’s Fly Moon Royalty. Bleeding with all the heart and soul of blues and r&b, combined with the contemporary aesthetics of modern day electronica and hip hop, the collaboration of the Seattle-based duo is a perfectly fitting contradiction. Comprised of soulful vocalist, Adra Boo and DJ/Producer/Emcee Action J, the two-piece are set to release their forthcoming EP, Unfinished Business, this coming February 18, 2014. Idling comfortably between the party ready glam of The Gossip, with the funk aesthetics of Gnarls Barkley, the EP is a progressive step forward for the band, and follows the release of 2012’s Dimensions EP and their stunning, self- titled debut LP in 2011. Their self-titled release cemented Fly Moon Royalty as certified up and comers within the local Seattle music scene, with Seattle Magazine naming the enigmatic duo as one of the city’s Best New Bands, while City Arts voted them as best the city’s Best Local Band in 2012, following an Honorable Mention in the same category a year earlier. With a No. 5 debut on KEXP’s r&b charts, the band have since gone onto support the likes of Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Macklemore, Slum Village, Robert Glasper, Nneka and Allen Stone. While their backgrounds couldn’t be more different, the musical partnership of Fly Moon Royalty came about naturally. Often likened sonically to Janelle Monae, vocalist AdraBoo’s roots are planted firmly in musical theater. “I started to step out and sing in highschool - I got into theater, and whenever there was a musical, I was in! I learned the ins and outs of the stage, and went on to attend a theater training program, and then, through friends in the club scene, I started hosting.” Enter second half of the duo, Action J - a Grand Rapids, MI local and newcomer to Seattle, the all-round MC/DJ/producer threw himself into DJing straight after high school. “Ultimately, I just wanted to make beats. I had no mentors or anyone at all that could teach me, so I bought myself an MPC 2000 and taught myself how to sample. It wasn't until I was taking a music program at the community college that I discovered my love for the piano. Before that moment I didn't even know what Middle C was on a piano.” Drawing inspiration from artists as diverse as J.Dilla and Bjork, to Stevie Wonder and Betty Davis, the duo quickly caught the attention of DeVon Manier, President of Seattle based indie Hip Hop label Sportn’ Life Music Group. Together, the two entities partnered to re-release the debut album as a joint effort, and currently have an ongoing management relationship with the band. Behind the funk heavy basslines of opening track, “Piece of Me,” Adra explains that there’s more to the duo than meets the eye. “It’s the story of wanting to be seen and understood to the core, not just visually on the surface,” a perfect pretense to the following tracks, that flow to the Daft Punk-esque sounds of the electronically driven harmonies of, “DNA,” and the hip hop aesthetics of “Step Hard.” A flagrant not to the duos eccentric influence, Unfinished Business showcase Fly Moon Royalty’s strength in their familiar, yet in no way traditional approach to music.

“I was alone, unpacking boxes in the strange old craftsman I rented a room in during my divorce. Out of nowhere my computer turned on and started playing Townes Van Zandt’s ‘For the Sake of the Song’. I shivered. I melted. I picked up my guitar and wrote ‘If Not The Man’” Years later, in an "about damn time" kind of moment, Seattle based singer-songwriter Caitlin Sherman is stepping out solo. She’s had her fair share of collaborations over the years, most notably the cosmic psych rock of Evening Bell and the hazy noir of Slow Skate. As a songwriter and arranger in both projects, she also held the role of girlfriend and wife. Now she is neither. Death To The Damsel is a meditation on love lost and independence found in the wake of back to back romantic/musical entanglements. Each song an act to unbind oneself from the past in order to look forward. There will be no White Knight to free the damsel. It’s high time she untie herself from those tracks and make a move. “Find me a fire, I’ll find the escape, an exit from all that we built an invisible stairway, hidden from shame for a quick getaway.” And so that “heroine without a hero needed” emerged with ten songs charting her own path. Dark contemplative songwriting explored through fresh unpredictable pop sensibility, dripping with art and purpose. Longtime friend Colin J Nelson produced, mixed and engineered the album in his Fremont studio Her Car. And while past projects incorporated vast soundscapes and string arrangements written by Sherman herself, she made the decision to stick to a set band sound making sure the song itself was the centerpiece. The pair worked to carve out a sound that protected the intimacy of the lyric and emotion with a studio band that could react to those dynamic needs.