Biography
Jessy Lanza stands apart through an expansive range of influences that stretch across synth pop, post-disco R&B, and underground club styles such as footwork. As a longtime Hyperdub mainstay, the vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer has issued a series of vivid albums for the respected British imprint. Her opening pair, Pull My Hair Back from 2013 and Oh No from 2016, each earned short-list nods for Canada’s Polaris Music Prize. All the Time, released in 2020, completed a three-album run shaped so intimately with Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan that Lanza could no longer separate their individual contributions except on the vocal tracks. Love Hallucination appeared in 2023 after her relocation to Los Angeles, outside songwriting assignments, and sessions involving a broader group of contributors that included Paul White and Jacques Greene.
Raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Lanza came of age in a household whose basement her father had stocked with recording equipment. She began piano and clarinet lessons while still young. After studying jazz and completing a music degree at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, she pursued graduate work in musicology at McGill before turning to music education. A recommendation led her to fellow Hamiltonian Jeremy Greenspan, who enlisted her as a backing singer for Junior Boys; she appeared on the 2011 album It’s All True and received synthesizer instruction in return. That alliance matured into Lanza’s debut, Pull My Hair Back, which Greenspan co-produced using some of the instruments she had inherited from her father and which Hyperdub issued in September 2013.
Ahead of that release she reworked Matthew Dear’s “Earthforms” and sang on Hyperdub labelmate Ikonika’s “Beach Mode,” and subsequent joint projects found her alongside Dan Snaith (operating as Caribou), Morgan Geist of Metro Area (under the Galleria name), and footwork artists DJ Spinn and Taso, the latter pair assisting on the 2015 12-inch “You Never Show Your Love.” Her second album, Oh No, arrived the following May with a brighter tone; it registered on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart and again reached the Polaris short list. After moving to New York and resuming work with Greenspan—largely at a distance—Lanza delivered All the Time in July 2020. In 2021 she supplied remixes for Marie Davidson, Caribou, and Kate NV while also issuing her first commercial DJ mix as a volume in the longstanding DJ-Kicks series. Having settled in Los Angeles following time in San Francisco, she began writing material for other performers, securing a co-writing credit on Låpsley’s “Pandora’s Box,” and assembled her fourth album with assistance from Paul White, Jacques Greene, Tensnake, and Greenspan once more. Love Hallucination, portions of which originated as songs intended for fellow artists, reached listeners in July 2023.
Raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Lanza came of age in a household whose basement her father had stocked with recording equipment. She began piano and clarinet lessons while still young. After studying jazz and completing a music degree at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, she pursued graduate work in musicology at McGill before turning to music education. A recommendation led her to fellow Hamiltonian Jeremy Greenspan, who enlisted her as a backing singer for Junior Boys; she appeared on the 2011 album It’s All True and received synthesizer instruction in return. That alliance matured into Lanza’s debut, Pull My Hair Back, which Greenspan co-produced using some of the instruments she had inherited from her father and which Hyperdub issued in September 2013.
Ahead of that release she reworked Matthew Dear’s “Earthforms” and sang on Hyperdub labelmate Ikonika’s “Beach Mode,” and subsequent joint projects found her alongside Dan Snaith (operating as Caribou), Morgan Geist of Metro Area (under the Galleria name), and footwork artists DJ Spinn and Taso, the latter pair assisting on the 2015 12-inch “You Never Show Your Love.” Her second album, Oh No, arrived the following May with a brighter tone; it registered on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart and again reached the Polaris short list. After moving to New York and resuming work with Greenspan—largely at a distance—Lanza delivered All the Time in July 2020. In 2021 she supplied remixes for Marie Davidson, Caribou, and Kate NV while also issuing her first commercial DJ mix as a volume in the longstanding DJ-Kicks series. Having settled in Los Angeles following time in San Francisco, she began writing material for other performers, securing a co-writing credit on Låpsley’s “Pandora’s Box,” and assembled her fourth album with assistance from Paul White, Jacques Greene, Tensnake, and Greenspan once more. Love Hallucination, portions of which originated as songs intended for fellow artists, reached listeners in July 2023.
Albums
Love Hallucination
2023
24/7 EP
2020
All the Time
2020
Oh No No No Remixes EP
2016
Oh No
2016
Pull My Hair Back
2013
Singles
