Samia

Alternative singer/songwriter Samia’s often angsty indie rock songs combine easygoing hooks and vulnerable insights. After releasing her first tracks in 2017, she delivered her debut album, The Baby, in 2020. The relationship-themed Honey followed in 2023.
A New York native, Samia Finnerty was writing songs and playing in bands and at open mikes by her mid-teens. The daughter of actress Kathy Najimy and actor/musician Dan Finnerty (the Dan Band), she also pursued acting, and as a 19-year-old in 2016, she appeared in the off-Broadway premiere of Sarah DeLappe’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play The Wolves. A guest spot on the Fox series Gotham followed in 2017. Continuing to work on her music, Samia released the guitar song “Welcome to Eden” later the same year, with fully arranged band tracks following over the course of the next year.
In 2019, she toured with Cold War Kids, opened a show for Soccer Mommy, and played festivals including SXSW and Firefly. Compiling some of her prior releases, including “Someone Tell the Boys” and “The Night Josh Tillman Listened to My Song,” her debut EP, Ode to Artifice, appeared that August. In the meantime, she released a handful of newly recorded covers, among them songs by Liz Phair and Daniel Johnston. Samia’s full-length debut, The Baby, arrived on independent label Grand Jury in August 2020. Its production team included Caleb Hinz, Lars Stalfors, and Hippo Campus’ Jake Luppen and Nathan Stocker.
The following January, The Baby Reimagined featured remixes and cover versions of the debut by artists like Field Medic, Palehound, and Bartees Strange. Samia herself then included a cover of When in Rome’s “The Promise” featuring indie soul singer and rapper Jelani Aryeh on the follow-up EP, Scout, in August 2021. It was produced by Boone Wallace and Andy Seltzer (IAN SWEET, Chelsea Cutler). Samia shared concert bills with the likes of Lucy Dacus and Courtney Barnett on ensuing tours.
Working again with Hinz, Samia next headed to Betty’s, a North Carolina studio operated by frequent touring partners Sylvan Esso, to record Honey, her second album. Released on Grand Jury in January 2023, it featured appearances by musician friends like Christian Lee Hutson, Briston Maroney, and Raffaella. ~ Marcy Donelson