beauty delux

Getting to know Kimbra.

22-year-old New Zealander Kimbra Lee Johnson is fast becoming one of the most recognizable faces and voices in Music video history of the last 5 years thanks to her duet with Australian crooner Gotye on “Somebody That I Used to Know”

“It’s been really cool watching people be able to put a face to my voice,” she says.  She is currently on tour with indie-pop act Foster the People.  “I would rather have people be familiar with my voice first, actually.” And what a voice it is: At times husky and raw, at others sweet and childlike, Kimbra injects a brassy theatricality into her vocal inflections. Typically—as with her first single, “Settle Down,” off her debut album, Vows (Warner Bros.)—she’ll leapfrog between soulful R&B harmonies, scat a cappella, and jagged, percussive yelps. It’s odd, but in a definitively pop way, as if Katy Perry had taken singing lessons from Björk.

 Her new hit single “Two way street”  with an even more polished bluesy swing to it will undoubtedly shift this new Kiwi talent career into high gear.

 

Her approach to pop music is the result of listening to artists that range from soul legends like Sam Cooke and Minnie Riperton to St. Vincent and Grizzly Bear. The goal, she says, is to “be pretty self-aware of all the different influences, but create something no one has heard before.” Her lofty ambition seems to have paid off: Vows debuted at No. 14 when it was released in May, and will no doubt be on heavy rotation as the onslaught of remixes of the Gotye collaboration continues…

Born in Hamilton, New Zealand, Kimbra first began writing songs at the age of 10. Two years later, she learned how to play the guitar and started recording her own music on a tap recorder cribbed from her school. “I’ve kept most of them,” she says. “A lot of those early songs I still use as sketches for the music I’m performing now.” She proudly admits to placing second in a national school singing competition when she was 14, and credits a high-school boyfriend for turning her on to Miles Davis and Nina Simone. But the biggest break came five years ago when she decided to skip college, move to Australia, and sign with manager Mark Richardson. “That’s when I first started looking at music as a big, complex project that was bigger than just me,” Kimbra says. Much like Kimbra’s music, the zany art-school visuals she concocts on stage and in her videos take cues from a warped, irreverent interpretation of Americana. She is often clad in ruched, thrift store–esque party dresses that appear borrowed from the wardrobe department of a John Hughes film. But Kimbra still has plenty of nationalistic pride, pairing her getups with a splattering of body paint that recalls the geometric patterns of indigenous art from Australia and New Zealand. “I like to think of my body as a canvas, and it’s part of the performance whether I am on stage or making a video,” she says. “But at the end of the day, it shouldn’t distract from the music.”