Grammy award-winning artist Aoife O'Donovan operates in a thrilling musical world beyond genre. Deemed “a vocalist of unerring instinct” by the New York Times, she has released two critically-acclaimed and boundary-blurring solo albums includingIn the Magic Hour,which Rolling Stone hailed for its "Impressionistic, atmospheric songs [that] relay their narratives against gorgeous pastoral backdrops."
O’Donovan spent the Winter and Spring of 2021 in the studio with acclaimed producer Joe Henry (Bonnie Raitt, Rhiannon Giddens) recording Age of Apathy, due out January 21, 2022. A savvy and generous collaborator, Aoife is one-third of the group I’m With Her with bandmates Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz who earned an Americana Music Association Award in 2019 for Duo/Group of the Year, and a Grammy-award in 2020 for Best American Roots Song. O'Donovan spent the preceding decade as co-founder and front woman of the string band, Crooked Still and is the featured vocalist and contributing songwriter on The Goat Rodeo Sessions - the group with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile.
Yasmin Williams
A native of northern Virginia, Williams, now 24, began playing electric guitar in 8th grade, after
she beat the video game Guitar Hero 2 on expert level. Initially inspired by Jimi Hendrix and
other shredders she was familiar with through the game, she quickly moved on to acoustic
guitar, finding that it allowed her to combine fingerstyle techniques with the lap-tapping she
had developed through Guitar Hero, as well as perform as a solo artist. By 10th grade, she had
released an EP of songs of her own composition. Deriving no lineage from "American primitive"
and rejecting the problematic connotations of the term, Williams' influences include the
smooth jazz and R&B she listened to growing up, Hendrix and Nirvana, go-go and hip-hop. Her
love for the band Earth, Wind and Fire prompted her to incorporate the kalimba into her
songwriting, and more recently, she's drawn inspiration from other Black women guitarists such
as Elizabeth Cotten, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Algia Mae Hinton. On Urban Driftwood, Williams
references the music of West African griots through the inclusion of kora (which she recently
learned) and by featuring the hand drumming of 150th generation deli of the Kouyate family,
Amadou Kouyate, on the title track.
Since its release in January 2021, Urban Driftwood has been praised by numerous publications
such as Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Wasington Post, NPR Music, No Depression, Paste
Magazine, and many others. Williams will be touring in support of Urban Driftwood throughout
2021