Brittany Davis

The smile, the candor, the piano playing and singing that can swivel between boom-bap and hard bop without notice: It is impossible not to fall under the spell of Brittany Davis the moment you see or hear them. Davis was born blind in Kansas City, the first of many challenges in their young life. Their mother went to prison for murder for a decade, and, while she served her sentence, Davis’ father died. The family eventually headed west, settling in Seattle. Davis studied the synthesizer while struggling with homelessness, moving within the city 60 times. But an encounter with Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard led not only to membership in his supergroup, Painted Shield, but also a spot on his revived label, Loosegroove.

Davis’ 2024 debut, Image Issues, was a spitfire mix of hip-hop and hard rock, humor and harrowing stories. On their astounding follow-up, 2025’s Black Thunder, Davis dipped into the studio with drummer D’Vonne Lewis and bassist Evan Flory-Barnes for two days of relentless improvisation. The result was one of the year’s most disarming and inspiring albums, as Davis considered the privilege of mere existence on “All You Get” and pondered the presence of forces felt but not seen on “Sun and Moon.” Situated somewhere among Lonnie Holley, Nina Simone, and Cécile McLorin Salvant, Davis is a radical new philosopher-singer at the intersection of jazz, poetry, gospel, and life itself.