Natalie Bergman

Natalie Bergman first gained recognition performing alongside her sibling as part of Wild Belle, the brother-and-sister project whose exploratory pop draws from reggae, Afrobeat, soul, and an array of additional styles. Following the 2019 release of the duo’s third album, Everybody One of a Kind, a drunk driver caused the deaths of Bergman’s father and stepmother. She withdrew to a monastery in New Mexico to reflect on the tragedy and started composing material that became her first solo record, the gospel-inflected Mercy, which appeared in 2021.

Bergman and her brother Elliot spent their formative years in the Chicago area, immersed in a household where Bob Dylan, Pharoah Sanders, and Etta James regularly filled the airwaves. At thirteen she wrote her earliest song on ukulele, after which the siblings spent several years capturing home recordings on a four-track. In 2006 Natalie entered Elliot’s Afrobeat ensemble NOMO as a percussionist and backing vocalist; four years later the pair launched Wild Belle. Their first album, Isles, surfaced in 2013, Dreamland followed in 2016, and Everybody One of a Kind arrived three years afterward. While preparing to perform at Radio City Music Hall in 2019, the siblings received word that their father and stepmother had been killed by a drunk driver. Bergman then traveled to a monastery in New Mexico’s Chama Valley, where she emerged in 2020 with a collection of uplifting songs and a strengthened sense of faith. She entered the studio to document her solo debut, issuing Mercy on Third Man Records in 2021; the album blends jazz, soul, rock, and gospel into a profoundly sustaining statement.