Samantha Lindo is a Bristol based new wave jazz & retro-pop artist, with a soulful indie edge, speaking & singing about the most relevant issues of our time.
Recently featured on the BBC Sounds Hot List curated by BBC Introducing, BBC 6 Music and Jaguar Worldwide, Samantha Lindo is described as having a voice that is ‘hauntingly flawless’, ‘having crowds mesmerised within seconds’.
Inspired by the vocal greats of jazz and Motown discovered in her father and grand father’s record collections, her new music borrows flavours from afro-beat, dub and R&B as well as taking influence from the soul and indie pop of contemporary artists like Michael Kiwanuka, Tom Misch, Poppy Ajudha, Celeste and mystery collective, Sault.
Covering subjects such as climate & racial justice, mental health and feminism, Nitelife magazine recounts how, by ‘weaving poetry’ and ‘beautiful lyricism through her songs’, Samantha presents some ‘very raw and real issues about love, life and the human condition’.
After launching her first single Turn & Leave alongside James Morrison at Sofar Sounds & Amnesty International’s global event ‘Give a Home’, Samantha also performed it as a featured artist at TEDx event ‘Daring to Disrupt’ in front of a live audience at Bristol’s Colston Hall and over 1M online.
Turn & Leave was featured on Saffron Records all female Spotify playlist, Sofar Sounds City Spotlight and in award winning short film ‘About’, by Brixton based Authentive productions, recently receiving several nominations in L.A & New York International Film Festival.
Having set up Girls, Girls, Girls, a London based all-female arts collective, with The Orchid project, a charity campaigning to end Female Genital Cutting, Lindo embarked on her first UK tour with co-founder Eliza Shaddad, collaborating with female artists all over the country including London’s Union Chapel.
As well as being celebrated in an interview in Oh Comely magazine’s issue on sisterhood, the pair were honoured to be chosen to perform in the Museum of London's ‘Votes for Women’ exhibition in 2018, singing the suffragette anthem in celebration of 100 years of the vote.
She appeared in The Guardian’s photographic essay last year, telling the story of being arrested for standing in solidarity for an indigenous Amazonian woman protesting to save her home, which inspired her single, Lips.
Again, receiving BBC airplay, the track was released in November at her sell out show in Bristol and celebrates all the women stepping up into activism across the world to demand a just and urgent response to the climate crisis.
She released her last single Underside at Rough Trade, written for her friend Rebecca, a counsellor, budding author and survivor of sexual abuse and CPTSD, performing live on BBC Radio Bristol, alongside the launch of their podcast, Let’s Hear it from the Underside, in collaboration with Time to Change, a national charity aiming to de-stigmatise talking about mental health.
Her live show received rave press reviews relating how ‘as a natural born storyteller’, Samantha articulated the meaning behind most of her songs giving an ‘insight into their process and influences and how inspiration can be drawn from all sources.’
‘Touching upon themes of friendship, heritage and powerful women, each one delivered with warmth, honesty and spine tingling vocal performance’ the writer ‘couldn’t keep count of the amount of times [they] had goosebumps’.
After a summer of cancelled gigs, Samantha is back this autumn with a classic cover and two other singles recorded over lockdown, leading to the launch of a brand new E.P. next year.
Coined as Etta James meets Kate Tempest, her vocal delivery holds the possibility for both a depth and effortless soaring and her words burn with a truth that is so needed in the cultural moment we find ourselves in.
Backed by her new band of ‘exceptionally talented’ musicians, Nitelife Online conclude that they ‘can well imagine Samantha shooting up to the top with an alarming speed – eyes peeled for this girl!’