ALMA VATYA is a twenty-one-year-old guitarist, singer, and banjo player who performs American vernacular music inspired and informed by a lifelong exploration of pre-war country blues, ballads, and spirituals. ALMA grew up in the high desert of Bisbee, Arizona. Her love for country blues began when a neighbor gave her a small handmade fretless banjo along with cassettes of Mance Lipscomb and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Her polyrhythmic guitar and banjo stylings and nuanced vocals have been honed through hundreds of performances to national and international audiences.
Naomi Westwater (she/they) is a queer, Black-multiracial singer-songwriter and producer from Massachusetts. They weave in and out of Folk music, flirting with rock and jazz. Naomi holds a Master of Music in Contemporary Performance and Production from Berklee College of Music. She was nominated for a 2021 Boston Music Award for Best Singer-Songwriter. Naomi’s 2021 EP Feelings was featured in Under The Radar, WBUR, Vanyaland, WGBH, Allston Pudding, and The Bluegrass Situation.
Pamela Means is an Easthampton MA-based Out(spoken), Biracial, independent artist whose “kamikaze guitar style” and punchy provocative songs have worn a hole in two of her acoustic guitars. With razor wit, an engaging presence, elegant poetry, irresistible charm, plus jokes, Pamela Means’s “stark, defiant songs” (New York Times) set the status quo and the stage afire.
Photocomfort is the platform for Boston-based artist Justine Bowe’s careful, expansive pop. Photocomfort is the distillation of the exacting songwriting, production and performance craftsmanship she lends to other recording projects like Hex Girlfriend, Anjimile, and Cliff Notez. She borrows as much from 90s radio heroes like Alanis Morissette and Dido as from Joanna Newsom or Radiohead. Huge vocal hooks soar over nimble arrangements, presenting the self-doubt and isolation born from the pursuit of “the dream” of being an artist as harrowing, irresistible and irresistibly catchy.
