Kissey Asplund

Swedish electro-soul singer Kissey Asplund first reached listeners by relying on the Internet as her chief outlet. Her 2008 debut album Plethora presented her silky, meandering falsettos inside an ethereal collage that fused neo-soul, jazz-house, deep house, hip-hop, and abstract broken beat. Born in 1982 to a Swedish father and a Grenadian mother from the West Indies, Asplund was raised with the expectation that she would become a music performer. Beginning at age six, she studied an array of instruments—piano and voice among them—at music school until she turned roughly 19. Around that time she chose to leave music behind for a career in art design, only to have friends persuade her, several years later, to start a MySpace music page in 2005. Various hip-hop and electronica producers supplied beats through the platform, moving the Swedish-born vocalist from blogosphere acclaim to live appearances in the Netherlands, Belgium, New York, and other cities. MySpace also introduced her to Paris production outfit Papa Jazz Crew, with whom she formed a lasting musical partnership. Once her demo tape circulated among labels, she signed with British-based R2 Records in 2007; the label released her first single and 7", "With You" b/w "Caos," that same year. The Papa Jazz Crew-produced demo was reworked as the Fuss 'n' Fight EP, which appeared in February 2008 and preceded the full-length Plethora—likewise produced entirely by Papa Jazz Crew—in March. Several additional vinyl singles, recorded for other labels, followed in 2008, among them the Record Breakin' 7" coupling "Move Me" with "99 Bottles."