Bio

[Shorter versions of this bio can be found here.]

Musician, songwriter, poet, and producer Kimaya Diggs triumphantly returns with her expansive new collection, Green, out October 2. Following her 2023 album Quincy, and 2024’s singles “I’m Sad Again” and “Everything Is Not Lost”, Green showcases twelve tracks of glittering, genre-bending indie pop, carried by Diggs’ powerful, honeyed vocals, and honest, attentive lyricism. 

Kimaya Diggs’ songwriting serves as both a portal of emotional processing, and a roadmap toward a future self; a not-yet-envisioned world and way of being. As Diggs began to write the songs that would become Green throughout the fall of 2024 and early 2025, she found herself encircled in a matrix of three central questions: 

• What makes a place feel like home? The people, or the land?

• What would happen if I had the chance to be reincarnated? Is one’s spirit destined to make the same type of mistakes forever, or is there a part of you that learns?

• What does it take to be good enough? How good do I have to be in order to not have bad things happen to me?

While each question found its way into the crevices and billowing halls of the songs across Green, it’s the final question that seemed to immediately reveal something more nuanced to Diggs, something worth excavating. “You can't be good enough to deserve to be treated kindly by the universe,” she came to realize. “But you can figure out how to be made of something tougher.” And this is where we find Kimaya Diggs on Green: an artist at her toughest and most confident; unafraid, verdant, alive.

Green marks a significant turning point in Diggs’ career. After finding herself desiring a change from previous recording processes, Diggs was eager to do something different with this album. Mainly, she knew she wanted to be the lead producer, and direct the recording and engineering process as it aligned with her vision, a leadership role she hadn’t previously taken on. “It was an exercise in being more assertive and really trusting my vision.” Knowing she wanted an album anchored by groove and a natural-sounding feel, this process of trust began with her confidently asserting, “I'm going to start by finding the perfect drummer. And wherever that person is, I will go to them and I will figure it out.” It ended up being in Nashville with drummer Erick Slick of Dr. Dog. Together with a group of trusted musicians, basic tracking for the album was completed in three days in May of 2025 at Nashville’s Barnfire Creative Studios. Jacob Rosazza and Ben Sanders provided additional production, with mixing helmed by Scott Hundley. This year also marks seven years since Diggs underwent major vocal surgery. Now finally fully healed after a long process of recovery, this is the first album Diggs felt she was able to use her voice to its fullest potential, a power that is certainly felt across the albums twelve buoyant tracks.  

In its production, Green is heavily anchored by the lineage of Black soul and R&B: whispers of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, and Minnie Riperton are heard throughout, an important callback to the music Diggs’ parents played for her growing up, and the music closest to her heart. But it’s true Diggs is no stranger to blending and expanding genre, and here her musical versatility is on full display, with her myriad influences interwoven seamlessly throughout her songwriting and production styles. The jubilant “Dance With Me” brings to mind soul hits of the 70s, replete with handclaps, harmonized background vocals, and a showstopping saxophone solo by Chicago-based musician and longtime collaborator, Sen Morimoto. “Compare Myself to Myself” indulges Diggs’ indie rock inclinations, an inherent nostalgia in the rhythmic electric guitar and ear-catching 2000s-era melody of her chorus. “Plants (still grow)” vividly recalls Diggs’ oft-conjured influence Corrine Bailey Rae, and “A Love That Lasts” fits snugly among contemporary soul titans like Cleo Sol or Victoria Monet. 

Even in the midst of such sonic variety, Diggs intuitively trusts that any ideas formulated beneath her fine-tuned vision possess an inherent cohesion.  “I really, really do believe – and I feel like I've seen evidence – that the fact that [the songs] exist within the same framework, under this umbrella of those same three questions, means that they are intimately related.” And so with these questions in mind, a powerful portrait of an artist seeking groundedness and a newfound self-fortitude comes into focus on Green.

It’s clear Diggs has high expectations for herself, as much as she resists the notion. She both promises to try to be perfect, and insists you needn’t be. “Am I cooler enough, wiser enough? Am I stronger enough, better enough?” she asks with a frenzied repetition. Throughout, an anxious self-assurance hums: “One more time, I’ll get it right”. But through betrayal and disappointment, Diggs continues to believe in her own purpose, reaching again and again for the foundation beneath her. On “I Want to Live!” Diggs defiantly insists on her own perseverance despite her plain reporting of life's burdensome toils: “Every day a new shame, every day a new claim to deny.” And yet, she wants to live! On Green, it’s clear Diggs has been forced to harden herself against the heartbreak that comes along with loving and being loved, but it would be foolish to mistake her hard-won grit for surliness aimed toward the world. It’s this very grit that shapes her love into something more capacious and ever-expanding. Her softness is in turn reserved for herself, the ones closest to her, and the earth. It’s this faithful preservation that serves as Green’s trustworthy tether. 

On spoken word interlude “A Sense of Place”, Diggs gives ode to the land she calls home, basking in the beauty of its familiarity. “I know the bugs in the soil/And the birds in the air/And the curves of the river/And the side of the mountain.” Her reflection ends with the affirmation: “I was born free.” It’s a relieving and world-opening truth repeated twice on the album, and one worth hurrying back to. 

No, Diggs cannot be certain of her own reincarnated fate. No, she cannot control the harm afflicted by the world, or the people she learned to trust. But perhaps her strength is revived in the moment she returns most deeply to herself, her roots, her place of becoming. Perhaps here she is freed from the pain and mistakes of her past self, freed from the death that chased, or the curses that followed. She was born free, so freedom is hers to claim. At this juncture of Diggs’ journey of home-making and heart-strengthening, even if the answers to her questions haven’t been found, a new, glimmering trust hovers. By album closer “Daylight”, the softest twinkle of bird chirps can be heard in the background. The land blooms in green. “I know it’s hard,” she assures. “But don’t give up that daylight.”

Listen to Green

About the album

Recorded in May 2025 in Nashville, TN at Barnfire Creative // and by Kimaya Diggs & Jacob Rosazza in our home studio in Western MA.

Green sounds ~~~
David Linaburg (J. Cole) — Guitar
Eric Slick (Dr. Dog) — Drums
Rhees Williams — Bass
Jess Nolan (Jenny Lewis) — Keys
Cavanaugh Mims — Keys
Ben Sanders — Guitar
Scott Hundsley — Engineer
Jacob Rosazza — Lots of things

Also featuring ~~~

Sen Morimoto
Lizzie No
Jess Nolan
Naomi Nye
Hannah Levy
Tobey Sol LaRoche
Kapali Long
Andy Cass
Reed Sutherland