181 State St
Portland, ME 04101
USA
Montreal-born Grenadian-Canadian Kaia Kater’s jazz-fueled voice and deft songcraft have garnered acclaim from NPR’s Tiny Desk, The Guardian, Rolling Stone and No Depression. Kaia 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.
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-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 (BET+ 2022). Her next album, recorded in Montreal with Joe Grass as co-producer, will land in October 2023.