Natalie Prass

Singer/songwriter Natalie Prass started out her career in a supporting role, but she managed to become the center of attention pretty quickly. Born on March 15, 1986 in Cleveland, Ohio, Prass grew up in Virginia Beach, where she had a band with Matthew E. White at a young age. Prass went to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music for a year, but when her father got a job in Nashville, she relocated there in 2006, switching her schooling over to Middle Tennessee University, where she took part in a songwriting program. In 2009, Prass released her own DIY EP, Small & Sweet, following it up two years later with the Sense of Transcendence EP. Neither record got her much traction, but a kind of turning point came in 2014. Rilo Kiley had been a major influence on Prass, and through a lo-fi demo, she ended up as the touring keyboardist in the band of erstwhile Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis. Around the same time, she reconnected with White, who was now a respected singer/songwriter himself. White co-produced Prass's self-titled 2015 debut album and released it on his Richmond, VA-based Spacebomb Records. With a sound that combined contemporary indie pop with '60s/'70s soul influences and White's elegant orchestrations, the record earned Prass a good deal of attention. Later the same year, she released the Side by Side EP through Columbia Records. In 2018, the ATO label put out Prass's second LP, The Future and the Past, which brought a bit more of an upbeat groove to her indie-pop/R&B blend, and found a spot on the Indie charts in both the U.S. and the U.K.