Mikaela Davis

A singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who excels at the harp, Mikaela Davis navigates folk, rock, and chamber pop on her textured pop songs. She emerged in the early 2010s with a handful of harp-accompanied solo covers of indie singer/songwriters, including one of Elliott Smith’s “Twilight” that quickly garnered tens of thousands of views. Applying more expansive arrangements to her own material, she made her label debut with the John Congleton-produced Delivery in 2018. A native of Rochester, New York, Davis took up the harp at the age of eight and was studying classical harp at the Crane School of Music when she began writing her own songs. She toured with them on school breaks, and self-released her eponymous debut LP in 2012. In the meantime, she shared a mix of original songs and voice-and-harp covers of artists such as Elliott Smith and Sufjan Stevens to music-sharing sites. The EPs Live from NOLA and Fortune Teller both followed in 2014, the year Davis completed her music degree. Davis reemerged two years later with the title track from another EP, Pure Divine Love (The Missions Sessions), which saw release in early 2017. Also early that year, she was featured on the song “Sun Kids” by psychedelic rock band Spaceface. Davis signed with Rounder Records later in 2017. Following a tour in support of Lake Street Dive, her John Congleton-produced Rounder debut, Delivery, arrived in July 2018. She was joined on the album by her regular touring bandmembers, Alex Coté (drums/guitars) and Shane McCarthy (bass), and, on two tracks, by the Staves. ~ Marcy Donelson