Biography
Karima Walker has pursued work across film, photography, writing, dance, and sculpture as well as music. Her debut EP, A Good Year, appeared as a self-release in 2012. On later recordings she broadened the intimate, occasionally eerie, country-tinged acoustic material while retaining a hushed, poetic voice. The 2017 full-length Hands in Our Names introduced more experimental elements, letting layered synths, field recordings, and tape loops meet structured folk across both songs and instrumentals. Waking the Dreaming Body, issued in 2021, continued this approach, drawing on instruments, electronics, and impressionistic lyrics to trace movement between exterior and interior realms as well as waking and dreaming states.
Walker was born to a Tunisian mother who departed the family in California for singing work overseas when her daughter was still a child. She spent most of her early years in the Tucson, Arizona desert, a landscape that recurs throughout her lyrics. Eventually she left Tucson to study and travel, later teaching philosophy while developing a multidisciplinary practice that included creative nonfiction, videography, and photography. She tracked the self-released A Good Year in Chicago during 2012, then returned to Tucson. Though that EP featured only solo acoustic guitar, the 2015 Take Your Time EP, still rooted in folk, introduced additional instrumentation and came out on Diet Pop Records in March.
Walker’s music remained atmospheric and artful yet turned more experimental on Hands in Our Names. Released by Orindal Records in March 2017, the album incorporated synthesizers, field recordings, phone and tape captures, and repeated analog-to-digital transfers. Its foundation stayed song-based. A subsequent collaborative EP with Nashville-based singer-songwriter Katy Kirby, Among Horses V, formed part of a series issued by the Catalonian label Son Canciones. Walker performed, produced, and engineered her second full-length, Waking the Dreaming Body, on her own except for one upright-bass contribution from C.J. Boyd; Orindal and Keeled Scales jointly released the album in 2021.
Walker was born to a Tunisian mother who departed the family in California for singing work overseas when her daughter was still a child. She spent most of her early years in the Tucson, Arizona desert, a landscape that recurs throughout her lyrics. Eventually she left Tucson to study and travel, later teaching philosophy while developing a multidisciplinary practice that included creative nonfiction, videography, and photography. She tracked the self-released A Good Year in Chicago during 2012, then returned to Tucson. Though that EP featured only solo acoustic guitar, the 2015 Take Your Time EP, still rooted in folk, introduced additional instrumentation and came out on Diet Pop Records in March.
Walker’s music remained atmospheric and artful yet turned more experimental on Hands in Our Names. Released by Orindal Records in March 2017, the album incorporated synthesizers, field recordings, phone and tape captures, and repeated analog-to-digital transfers. Its foundation stayed song-based. A subsequent collaborative EP with Nashville-based singer-songwriter Katy Kirby, Among Horses V, formed part of a series issued by the Catalonian label Son Canciones. Walker performed, produced, and engineered her second full-length, Waking the Dreaming Body, on her own except for one upright-bass contribution from C.J. Boyd; Orindal and Keeled Scales jointly released the album in 2021.
Albums
Singles
