Karima Santi is one of the most imaginative rising stars in the Austin music scene. A multi-hyphenate singer, songwriter, and producer, each single from her upcoming concept album “Royale” reveals a romantic world set over a high stakes poker game. Her music has been labeled “exquisitely fragile” by The Austin Chronicle and praised for its “soft power” by CBS Austin. Santi’s work blends sophisti-pop, dream pop, and influences from her Nigerien heritage, with her favorite West African artist Sade serving as Royale’s greatest muse. As a grantee of the Austin Live Music Fund, Santi has aligned herself with the best and brightest talent in Austin, leading to an evolution in her artistic output and a swiftly growing audience of listeners who are captivated by her voice and enchanted by the vivid world she continues to build.

However, Santi’s imagination can be difficult to reign in at times. Her early music career was spent struggling to stay in just one lane. Straight out of college she bounced between bands, dabbled with painting, and briefly attended Johns Hopkins for fiction writing. But after dropping out to return to music, a failed screenplay became the scaffolding for her first full length album “Royale”. Studying film inspired the album’s colorful characters, unique lyrical storytelling, and the delicately crafted three act rise and fall heard in Santi’s production. Her obsession with writing a soundtrack for the movie she never finished offered Santi a creative constraint that blossomed into a flurry of creativity like never before.

Growing up splitting time between West Africa, Europe, and the US, Santi is no stranger to merging diametrically opposed worlds. Her parents were brought together by the Peace Corps in Niger, and though they disagreed on many things, they both enthusiastically encouraged Santi’s early interest in the arts. Starting classical piano at age 8 and writing poetry at age 10, Santi was nurtured for her sensitivity as an artist and her voracious appetite for reading and writing. At 14 she began studying jazz guitar and composing original songs, the passion for which has compounded into thousands of songs written, although the notorious perfectionist has released fewer than 20.

Since moving to Austin, she has teamed up with Texas State-trained jazz guitarist Ibra Martinez and UT-trained jazz bassist Taylor Turner, with engineering support from Austin Sisler of East Side Studios. Using her favorite Sade records as reference tracks, Santi has guided the band towards her ambitious vision for Royale: building a sonic world of romance fans can escape to. With all vocal production completed solo in her walk-in closet, the tracks possess an intimate, fragile quality certainly inspired by Sade, but never stolen. Overall, the record reveals an artistic depth that cannot be manufactured, and Santi’s world tends to linger with you long after the music fades.