Tasha

Tasha’s radiant blend of folk, R&B, pop, and jazz — paired with quietly powerful lyrics that posit kindness, romance, and equality as radical, necessary acts in the modern world — has taken her to unexpected places. Transitioning to music after a career in community organizing and activism, she released a triptych of eye-opening, reflective albums (plus well-loved, dreamy singles like “But There’s Still the Moon” and “Would You Mind Please Pulling Me Close?“) and even made a splash on Broadway helping to reinterpret one of the 21st century’s most beloved alt-folk albums, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise. Tasha Viets-VanLear grew up in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago, the child of actors who found herself drawn more toward stage performance and slam poetry than music in her youth. (She nonetheless learned to play guitar and violin.) As a student of St. Olaf College in Minnesota, she studied dance, constructing a unique thesis that outlined radicalism and activism in the dance moves of Black performers. Returning home, she began volunteering and eventually working for Black Youth Project 100, an organization dedicated spreading awareness around issues affecting members of the LGBTQ+ community, women, and people of color — all identities that Tasha aligns with. After self-releasing the EP Divine Love in 2016, Tasha found that her lyrical values of self-care and radical joy fit well with the tenor of the times, and she moved further into the singing and performing space. She released her first full-length, Alone at Last, in 2018; Tell Me What You Miss the Most, featuring the alluring “Perfect Wife,” followed in 2021. (In the interim, during the COVID-19 pandemic, her stand-alone singles “But There’s Still the Moon” and “Would You Mind Please Pulling Me Close?” became two of her most popular tunes, reaching over a million streams apiece.) After touring alongside acts like Jamila Woods and even dabbling in freelance music journalism, Tasha re-emerged in 2023 with one of her highest-profile projects yet: she joined the cast of a musical adaptation of Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise as one of the show’s featured vocalists, staying with the show from its earliest workshops in Chicago all the way to a Tony-nominated Broadway run. The highs of her musical journey, combined with personal tribulations (including a sudden breakup and the death of co-producer Eric Littman) inspired the songs of her third studio album, the aptly titled All This and So Much More, released in 2024. ~ Mike Duquette