Artist Zola Jesus

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Zola Jesus

Zola Jesus doesn’t make it all that easy to separate the voice from the mystique. The Madison, Wisconsin project’s 22-year-old diminutive mastermind goes by the name of Nika Roza Danilova, and first gained notice pairing the full-throated, shuddering romance of her vocals with briny, industrial-pop production. She put out the album The Spoils and a busy flurry of EPs and 7-inches over just a couple short years. Her 2011 full-length, Conatus, builds on the diminutive singer’s ethereal aura, with tracks like “Vessel” simultaneously soaring to mist-ringed mountaintops and plodding through rainy, grey cityscapes. It’s a consistently haunting and beautiful record, and an endlessly promising sign of good things to come in the future from this Midwestern nymph.

Updated 02/08/2012