Yasmin Williams

With a compositional style that’s relaxing as well as inventive, acoustic fingerstyle guitarist Yasmin Williams specializes in lap tapping, a technique that involves playing the guitar with both hands over the fretboard as it rests face-up on the player’s lap. Incorporating tapped harmonics, bowing, percussive strikes, alternative tunings, and even tap shoes into her sound, she landed on the Billboard Heatseekers chart with her debut album, 2018′s Unwind. Williams’ second album, 2021′s Urban Driftwood, was a critical breakout, earning widespread acclaim and a subsequent label deal with Nonesuch. She made her label debut in 2024 with Acadia, an album that featured guest vocalists like Aoife O'Donovan and Darlingside. Hailing from Woodbridge, Virginia, Williams became interested in the guitar after playing the video game Guitar Hero 2 as a preteen. She soon received an electric guitar and amplifier as a gift and started teaching herself to play by ear. A few years later, she added 12-string, classical, and bass guitar to her repertoire, eventually focusing on acoustic guitar. She released a self-recorded EP, 2012′s Serendipity, when she was still in high school. Williams went on to study music theory and composition at New York University, winning their annual student talent competition, UltraViolet Live!, as a freshman. In the process, she performed to a sold-out Skirball Center. She completed her Bachelor of Music in May 2018, the same month she self-released her debut LP, Unwind. Williams was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition a month later, and Unwind reached number 15 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart that July. “Take That Step,” with New York-based singer/songwriter Jason Bembry, appeared in 2019. Williams returned in 2021 with her second full-length, Urban Driftwood, issued by the Spinster label. Recorded during the COVID-19 lockdowns and inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, the album included guest appearances by cellist Taryn Wood and hand drumming by Amadou Kouyate, a 150th-generation djeli of the Kouyate family. Urban Driftwood was a significant critical success for Williams and helped her land a contract with the legendary Nonesuch label, which released her third album, Acadia, in 2024. Experimenting for the first time with lyrics, she collaborated with several outside singers including Aoife O'Donovan and the band Darlingside as well as instrumentalists like Dom Flemons and Immanuel Wilkins. ~ Marcy Donelson