Caiti Baker

Australian vocalist and songwriter Caiti Baker began her recording career as one half of the experimental hip-hop duo Sietta before shifting toward a roots-oriented solo approach rooted in organic instrumentation. Born and raised in Darwin within Australia’s Northern Territory, she absorbed music from an early age because her father worked as a blues musician and regularly took the family to blues and folk performances. While absorbing influences that ranged from hip-hop and R&B figures such as Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, and Janet Jackson to classic jazz and blues singers including Aretha Franklin, Etta James, and Memphis Minnie, Baker trained her own voice. By age twelve she had started composing material and would spend hours layering harmonies with herself over her father’s home-recording equipment.

In the mid-2000s she crossed paths with multi-instrumentalist and producer James Mangohig; discovering shared musical preferences, the pair launched the duo Sietta. Their sound merged deep electronic beats, tropical melodic accents, and the soulful force of Baker’s vocals. The partnership issued an independent EP, The Come Back Easy Play, in 2009, then signed with Elefant Traks for the 2011 album The Seventh Passenger and its 2012 remix companion The Dark Passenger. Sietta returned with the 2014 album The Invisible River, after which Baker chose to pursue work under her own name.

Following a four-year period of estrangement, she reconciled with her father, who supplied a USB drive containing original guitar patterns and harmonica riffs. Baker and producer Michael Hohnen sampled these elements to construct the foundation of her debut solo recordings. Her first solo single, “Heavy on My Heart,” appeared in August 2016 and earned Best Blues and Roots Song at the NT Song of the Year Awards; the follow-up, “Make Your Own Mistakes,” collected both Best Pop Song and Song of the Year honors. In October 2017 she issued her first solo album, Zinc, which drew widespread acclaim from Australian critics.