“You want some authenticity in your folk music or bluegrass – I give you Kaia Kater.” No Depression

Through her artful banjo playing and lush songwriting, Kaia Kater draws on influences rooted in Quebec, the Caribbean, and Appalachia, all of which reflect the diversity of her background; her family’s deep ties to the Canadian folk music scene; her college years spent soaking up Appalachian music in West Virginia and her father’s experience growing up in Grenada, arriving in Canada in 1986, after the U.S. invasion. Her jazz-fueled voice and deft song-craft have garnered acclaim from The Guardian, Rolling Stone, No Depression and NPR’s Tiny Desk.

Kaia released her first EP Old Soul (2013) when she was just out of high school. Since then, she’s gone on to release three more albums, Sorrow Bound (2015), Nine Pin (2016) and Grenades (2018). For the JUNO award-nominated and Polaris Music Prize long-listed Grenades, Kaia leaned into a wide array of sounds and styles in order to convey a broad range of emotions and topics, most notably her Caribbean ancestry and her father’s experience as a refugee in Canada. In 2020, Kaia took part in the Slaight Music Residency at the Canadian Film Center, released a new single, and wrote original music for The Porter TV series (BET+ 2022), for which she garnered a Canadian Screen Award for Best Original Song in a Drama Series. Her next album, recorded in Montreal with Joe Grass as co-producer, will land in late 2023.