New York-based singer Jihae is one of the more difficult to place artists of her respective genre - that is, if you can place her genre first. Compared to everyone from Nina Simone to Thom Yorke, Jihae is not easily explained. Equal parts haunting and lovely, Jihae makes pop music that has the kind of hackneyed irreverence that someone like Tom Waits so expertly deploys. Far more emotionally blunt than anything Mr. Waits has ever done, Jihae prefers dark spaces to explore her sensitive moments, the production lurking somewhere between Velvet Underground and dub reggae's darker possibilities. Jihae's lyrics are as oblique as her music, though she often explores issues of gender and sexuality in subtly political ways, even crossing into spoken word territory at times.
