Another product of Chicago’s rich underground emerges.

We first heard Keiya’s rich voice on ‘Runaway’, a collaboration with fellow Chicagoans Kywo and Khallee. Now, the singer has released her self-produced debut EP, Work.

A musician for as long as she can remember, Keiya grew up in choirs before turning her focus to alto saxophone, her main musical outlet until just a few years ago. “I didn’t feel like I was being true to myself,” she explains. “I was missing something else: the ability to have this music come straight from my body without a vessel.”

While she notes her love of “all forms of black expression,” from soul singers Chaka Khan, Patrice Rushen and Alexander O’Neal to jazz greats John Coltrane and Miles Davis to turn-of-the-millennium R&B groups like Total and SWV, she was equally influenced by the songwriting and sincerity of Nirvana, My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Listening to goth and post-punk music (plus her “metal phase”) made her feel like a “black sheep,” but her music benefits from her eclectic interests.

Despite changing her focus to woozy R&B, her jazz training still influences her process, as she builds drum patterns around chords and then scats melodies and “word-sounds” before finally adding lyrics. Written during a time of personal difficulty as well as the beginning of Chicago’s infamous winter, Work reflects on relationships during cold, dark days.

Stream the EP below and download it via Bandcamp.