Peyton

Peyton crafts progressive R&B that feels personal and unconventional while remaining consistently tuneful. The vocalist and composer began issuing independent material in the middle of the 2010s. One of those tracks, the dreamy romantic ballad “Sweet Honey” from 2016, landed in an installment of Insecure and secured a contract with Stones Throw. Following her label introduction via the 2019 Reach Out EP, the Houston native assembled her debut full-length album, PSA, which arrived in 2021.

Born Peyton Booker in Missouri City, the lifelong Texan grew up in Houston. She took up singing and violin early on, supported enthusiastically by relatives that included her grandmother Theola Booker, a longtime minister of music who wrote and arranged pieces for James Cleveland and instructed Beyoncé on piano. During her early teenage years, Peyton addressed social anxiety through original songwriting and performances, then moved quickly into recording and self-releasing her work. Late in 2015 she put out the Roller Coaster EP, which included a bass contribution from the Internet’s Steve Lacy on “Tell Me” and production from Chase of Nazareth, Bobby Earth, Brandon Willis, and Peyton herself. Over the following years she delivered the ten-track Peace in the Midst of a Storm along with additional singles such as “Sweet Honey.” Both that song and “Lifeline,” drawn from Peace in the Midst of a Storm, featured in episodes from the third season of Insecure in 2018. In 2019 she joined the Stones Throw roster and issued the six-track Reach Out EP. After a pair of interim 2020 singles that included another Steve Lacy collaboration, “Verbs,” Peyton finished her first proper album and released it in 2021 as PSA. By then she had also accumulated numerous featured appearances, most prominently on James Francies’ Blue Note album Purest Form.