Dawn Richard has evolved from membership in Danity Kane and Diddy-Dirty Money to become one of the more progressive forces in left-field pop, R&B, and electronic music. Since working closely with the instigator of those two groups, Sean "Diddy" Combs, the singer, songwriter, and producer has released several conceptual albums, from Goldenheart (2013) to Pigments (2022), which include a Billboard Top Ten R&B/hip-hop distinction for the former and a pair of subsequent Top Five entries on the Dance/Electronic chart. Richard evades genre restrictions with emotive and frequently thrilling results, and connects the past to the future by honoring her Louisiana Creole and Haitian heritage with visionary instinct. In addition to her work in the studio and on-stage, Richard is an actor and animator.

Dawn Angeliqué Richard was born and raised in New Orleans. Part of a creative family, she's the daughter of Chocolate Milk's Frank Richard and spent much of her upbringing in her mother's dance school. Before she achieved mainstream visibility, she recorded as Dawn Angeliqué, debuting in 2005 with Been a While, an independently issued set of contemporary R&B made while she was attending the University of New Orleans and working as an NBA cheerleader. Around the same time, Richard made her first appearance on Making the Band 3. The third edition of the reality series produced Danity Kane, a group who released two Billboard 200-topping albums, Danity Kane and Welcome to the Dollhouse, and split in 2009. Along with Diddy and Kalenna Harper, Richard then became one-third of Diddy-Dirty Money, a short-lived group that released the album Last Train to Paris and the mixtape Love Love vs. Hate Love before ending in 2012.

Richard resumed a solo career that has developed throughout multiple splits and reunions of Danity Kane. Amid mixtapes and EPs, as well as a third full-length with Danity Kane, she released a trilogy of solo albums from 2013 through 2016, beginning with Goldenheart, which dented the Billboard 200 and entered the R&B/hip-hop chart at number ten. Part two of her "heart" trilogy, Blackheart, took her sound further out two years later and almost topped the Dance/Electronic chart. Redemption completed the trilogy in 2016 and became her second Top Five Dance/Electronic entry.

After she contributed words and vocals to a song on multi-instrumentalist/composer Spencer Zahn's People of the Dawn LP in 2018, Richard started a new solo chapter in 2019 with New Breed, a set tightly connected to her hometown and her father. She continued in 2021 with her first release for Merge Records, Second Line, threaded with segments of discussions with her mother. The next year, she teamed again with Zahn for Pigments, a meditative full-length suite blurring the distinctions between neo-classical, atmospheric jazz, and ambient electronic music with strings, woodwinds, and sampled elements. ~ Andy Kellman

New York-based musician and composer Spencer Zahn makes lush, exploratory music that melds numerous genres, including chamber jazz, folk, ambient, and modern composition. His largely instrumental catalog includes reflective solo piano works as well as ensemble works emphasizing collaboration and group interplay. A longtime session and touring musician, he made his solo debut with the synth-heavy experimental album People of the Dawn in 2018. Sunday Painter, his first effort leading a full band, appeared in 2020, and he has collaborated with Dave Harrington on several releases. Pigments, his acclaimed full-length with vocalist Dawn Richard, was issued in 2022. The two-part Statues, split between piano compositions and electronic pieces, arrived in 2023.

Born in Massachusetts, Spencer Zahn took up the bass guitar when he was 12 and many years later became an accomplished jazz bassist. He moved to New York during the mid-2000s and found work as a touring musician. He started a solo career in 2015, working with Dave Harrington and focusing on instrumental music. Within a few years, he had released two solo albums, 2018's People of the Dawn and 2019's When We Were Brand New; issued by Double Denim Records, both records were synth-heavy with jazz inflections. Zahn built up a strong musical community around himself, which he showcased with the release of 2020's Tura Lura (with Harrington and Jeremy Gustin) and Sunday Painter, a full group effort inspired by Keith Jarrett and the ECM catalog. Both were released by Cascine. Zahn also appeared on First Flight (on the Algorithm Free imprint), a live improvisation with Chris Forsyth, Harrington, and Ryan Jewell, which was followed by a 2021 dub rework titled First Flight Redux.

Two further albums arrived in 2022: the solo Pale Horizon and a collaboration with Dawn Richard called Pigments, released by Merge to critical acclaim. In 2023, Zahn, Harrington, and Gustin covered Harry Styles' full-length Harry's House (winner of the 2023 Album of the Year Grammy) as an instrumental jazz recording, titled A Visit to Harry's House. Zahn released the solo piano effort Statues I (featuring an interpretation of the Carla Bley piece "Lawns") and the experimental electronic work Statues II as separate digital albums, then as the gatefold double-LP Statues. ~ Paul Simpson & Liam Martin