From time to time, you hear a song that is so perfect and commercially viable that you ask yourself, “how is this not a major record already?”. An excellent example of this is the music of Kris Angelis from Los Angeles, our first featured artist in February. She’s such a good storyteller and just too good to be overheard.
Singer as a Baby, Songwriter as a Child
Kris Angelis has been living her whole life musically. “My mom says I’ve been singing since before I could talk. I would sing melodies when I didn’t actually know words.” Growing up on a farm in Florida, Kris spent her childhood playing, running around the farm, and making up songs with her twin sister. They composed their first song at the age of three — and it lives on now, interwoven into one of Kris’s more recent works.
Learning from the Best
While her early musical influences were limited to her grandparents’ Rodgers and Hammerstein videos, her parents’ records, and the Lawrence Welk show — one of the few that came in on their TV — Kris did not feel deprived. “I would put on my parents vinyl records which included the Beatles, the Eagles, the Archies, and even Strauss waltzes, and dance around, pretending to be the singer. I loved it. It was a great basis in melodies and harmonies.” Later she would sing in the church choir and, when her family moved to California, in her summer camp’s musical productions. Discovering the band Hanson, siblings who were very young themselves at the time, opened up the possibility of making music herself. She delved into learning harmonies with her twin sister, Alix, taking full advantage of the way siblings’ voices work together.
Musician and Storyteller
It was with the help of a musician friend that Kris first began learning guitar. She continued learning on her own. And dived right into songwriting with inspirations including Brandi Carlile, Ray Lamontagne, Taylor Swift, Hanson, The Lumineers, Elton John, Ingrid Michaelson, Sara Bareilles, and many more! “It’s how I create, how I express myself. But it’s also a huge part of how I get through life. Music is a universal language. It evokes emotion. It resonates in our souls, it actually vibrates in our bodies.”
Since her early days, she has been going a long way. But she has by far not yet reached her destination. You can read more about Kris in the coming days here. But first, listen – also with your eyes – to her recent single Please Come Back Home in this video Soundposter, the first of a series we will reveal in the coming days:
Buy Kris Angelis’ single Please Come Back Home from iTunes.
New Single out on February 9th
Kris has her brand new single A Billion Hearts coming out on February 9th, and it’s available for pre-sale right now: http://bit.ly/abillionhearts. Pre-order the song and help Kris to get on the iTunes Charts even before it’s officially in the stores.
7 thoughts on “Kris Angelis has a lot of Stories to tell”