Who Is Banks?

Artist of the Week: Banks

She goes by Banks. The latest seductive voice singing R&B-inflected, come-hither lyrics in dulcet tones over smooth, perfectly produced beats goes by the name Banks. That’s it, just Banks. Though if you pull up her Facebook page, she has posted her phone number there. So you might not have her first name (or is it her last?), but you do have her digits. 



Cute. The Guardian labeled her a dance-y Lana Del Rey, which seems like a stretch. But perhaps it’s in reaction to the scrutiny Lana’s biography endured that Banks (and so many other new artists like her) has opted for buzzy little mysterious background stories?



Like I said, it’s cute, but Banks doesn’t need the mystery. Since teaching herself at fourteen to play piano on a toy keyboard she’d received as a gift, she’s seen music as, in her words, “the cure to my helplessness.” Her songs (there’s been two so far) perfectly capture a feeling of being lost and powerless in the world. But the music is powerful, the opposite, as she put it, of helpless.



A lot of this derives from the production. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs worked with her on “Warm Water”; SOHN with her on “Waiting Game.” Both tracks float with Bank’s voice, which beautifully carries lyrics about love and wanting. “I make things that come from the heaviest part of me. I want my music to affect; people’s hearts and minds—and their bodies,” says Banks. “R&B has that—it forces you to move and feel.”

This fall Banks tours across North America this in support of The Weeknd and will release her debut EP on Harvest Records. — Jacob Brown | Vogue

WHO, EXACTLY, IS BANKS? — LA WEEKLY

Banks, Quick-Rising Pop Starlet, Explains Why Her Fans Have Her Cell Number — Billboard