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

Montreal-born Grenadian-Canadian Kaïa Kater’s jazz-fueled voice and deft songcraft have garnered acclaim from NPR’s Tiny Desk, The Guardian, Rolling Stone and No Depression. Kaïa 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.

Kaïa 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, Kaïa 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).