Alex Isley

Dreamy and offbeat R&B suffused with soul remains Alex Isley’s signature sound. Working as vocalist, composer, arranger, and producer, she has issued independent solo material that encompasses multiple EPs, the albums Dreams in Analog (2013) and L U X U R Y (2015), and a run of singles led by the 2020 Jack Dine collaboration “Good & Plenty.”

Born in Westwood, New Jersey, and long based in Los Angeles, Isley is the daughter of Ernie Isley of the Isley Brothers. Her maternal grandmother, an opera singer, provided classical training, after which Isley pursued jazz theory and performance studies at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts before earning a jazz-studies degree at UCLA. She introduced her characteristically understated yet emotive R&B approach on the 2012 EP Love/Art Memoirs. Dreams in Analog followed the next year and featured Paris Strother of We Are King, while L U X U R Y closed 2015 with an opening track whose string arrangement Isley herself crafted.

By then she had already lent her voice in supporting roles across numerous projects, among them Robin Thicke’s Paula, Scarface’s Deeply Rooted, and Bryson Tiller’s T R A P S O U L, alongside appearances on recordings by artists working in rap, jazz, and pop. She also fronted the Decoders’ version of Chaka Khan’s “What Cha’ Gonna Do for Me” and supplied uncredited background vocals on Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-winning “These Walls.”

After issuing a pair of standalone singles and appearing on PJ Morton’s The Piano Album, Isley returned with the EPs The Beauty of Everything, Pt. 1 (2018) and The Beauty of Everything, Pt. 2 (2019). That same year she contributed to Tank and the Bangas’ Green Balloon and recorded the EP Wilton with Jack Dine. In 2020 she delivered two widely noted slow jams—“Gone” and the Masego-assisted “Good & Plenty,” both produced with Dine—joined Cautious Clay on “Reaching” for the season-four soundtrack of Insecure, and took part in several Terrace Martin–led efforts including Dinner Party: Dessert. A remix of “Good & Plenty” featuring Lucky Daye arrived the following year.