Formed by Merrill Garbus in 2006, Tune-Yards has become a name synonymous with creativity and forward motion. Known for explosive performances, surprising song structures, and danceable rhythms, their music also highlights connections between song and social consciousness. The New York Times praised their debut album, BiRd-BrAiNs, as “a confident do-it-yourselfer’s opening salvo,” and relentless touring established Garbus as a commanding live performer. Garbus stepped into the producer role with 2011’s w h o k i l l, a bold and sonically inventive album that earned critical acclaim, including the #1 spot on The Village Voice’s Pazz and Jop poll. By 2021’s sketchy., Garbus and bassist Nate Brenner had solidified their partnership, creating a fully collaborative work. The duo has announced their sixth studio record, Better Dreaming, to be released on May 16, 2025 on 4AD. Tune-Yards also excels in scoring, contributing to Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, I’m A Virgo, and the forthcoming I Love Boosters. Their artistry continues to expand across music, film, and television.

If you’re trying to understand the future of jazz, turn your attention to Kassa Overall. Revered by living icons and underground tastemakers, he began his career behind the drum kit. Raised in Seattle, some of his earliest gigs were at a Starbucks on the corner of 23rd and Jackson, an intersection name-checked in Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Posse’s on Broadway”, just blocks from Jimi Hendrix’s childhood home and down the street from Garfield High School, an alma mater Kassa shares with Seattle’s black musical pantheon: Jimi, Quincy Jones, and Digable Planets’s Ishmael Butler. Kassa was raised in the city's South End by parents he describes as a “black bohemian father and a white hippie mother”. One favored Ornette Coleman, the other Bob Dylan. They had met at a live-in spiritual center, pursuing a path of meditation and prayer. Kassa emerged from the womb at home, accompanied by the sounds of tabla drums. After drums came rap music. Early inspirations were DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (“Parents Just Don’t Understand”) and Public Enemy (“Fight The Power”).  “Our musical creation was always deeply connected to a bigger purpose and a kind of revolutionary tone,” he says. “It was always tied to saying something.”  At the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Kassa spent his days studying jazz drums and music theory, and his evenings making beats in his dorm room, often staying home from parties to pull all-nighters in front of his MPC, studio monitors, and an open Pro Tools session. At Oberlin, he met musicians who remain his closest musical collaborators to this day. He also met his greatest mentor and north star, Billy “Jabali” Hart, an NEA Jazz Master and veteran of Herbie Hancock’s experimental sextet Mwandishi.  The summer after graduation, he landed a room in NYC, living in bassist-composer Bill Lee’s Fort Greene house, the same house Spike Lee grew up in, for $200 a month. A call from piano legend Geri Allen to play at the Village Vanguard sparked the beginning of his touring career, leading to work as an in-demand sideman with Theo Croker, Jon Batiste, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer and Gary Bartz.  Kassa’s groundbreaking solo projects have established him as a driving force on the international stage, fielding support from visionaries including Thom Yorke, Iggy Pop, Virgil Abloh, and more. His first studio album GO GET ICE CREAM AND LISTEN TO JAZZ (2019) bore witness to the emergence of a sound that layered the virtuosic drumming, polyrhythmic rapping, and meticulous production techniques he had honed separately. On I THINK I’M GOOD, released in 2020 on Brownswood Recordings, his voice continued to crystallize, critiquing the injustices of the carceral system, the pharmaceutical industry, and anti-black racism. ANIMALS, released in 2023 on Warp Records, he further showcased the breadth of his, songwriting, production chops and unique rhythmic sensibility, from Roland 808s to abstract, modernist drumming.  From Newport to North Sea, his band has garnered wide acclaim for their live performances, which Gilles Peterson has called “completely surreal”. He has appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series and released several critically acclaimed mixtapes.