Masha Qrella

German electro singer/songwriter Masha Qrella makes music that borrows equally, and effortlessly, from folk, pop, and her homeland's burgeoning electronic music scene. The daughter of a Russian physicist father and a German somnologist mother, Qrella's career began in the late '90s when, inspired by the likes of Stereolab and Mouse on Mars, she played with the bands Mina and Contriva. In the early 2000s, she came into her own as a solo artist, releasing the single I Want You to Know and her debut album, Luck, on Gudrun Gut's Monika label, and touring with the likes of Calexico and ISO68. She continued to work with former Mina bassist/engineer Norman Nitzsche, with whom she built her own studio, Villa Qrella. Qrella worked on various projects, including the soundtrack to the film Kleinruppin Forever, remixes, and one-off tracks for compilations while she worked on her second solo album, Unsolved Remained, which was released by Morr Music in 2005. That year, her first album with the project NMFarner arrived, followed by another in 2006. After a U.S. tour and a Contriva reunion, Qrella released 2009's Speak Low, which featured her take on songs by Kurt Weill and Frederick Loewe. On 2012's Analogies, she delivered her poppiest set of songs yet. A year later, her cover of the Cure's "Boys Don't Cry" was issued as a 7" single on Morr Music sublabel A Number of Small Things. In 2016, Qrella returned to Morr proper with her fifth full-length, Keys. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi