Dessa at the Raccoon Motel -- April 14.
Friday, April 14, 8 p.m.
Raccoon Motel, 315 East Second Street, Davenport IA
Hailed by the Chicago Tribune as a talent who "achieves a sublime synthesis" as a pop/hip-hop singer and a rapper/poet, Dessa headlines an April 14 concert event at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the performer lauded by The Current as "an artist who is growing ever sharper, galvanized by her pain and empowered to tell the truth about the dark side of love, power, and hard-fought success."
Born Margret Wander in 1981, Minneapolis native Dessa graduated from the IB Diploma Programme in 1999 and went on to attend the University of Minnesota, where she earned a B.A. in philosophy. Before becoming an artist full-time, she waited tables and worked as a technical writer for a medical manufacturer. But after becoming drawn to the raw aesthetics and unique sound of Minneapolis' hip-hop collective Doomtree, she was asked to join its record label, and has consequently Dessa toured with and appeared on all Doomtree albums, as well as on the other members' solo albums. For a time, Dessa was also the CEO of Doomtree, although she eventually relinquished that post to her label mate Lazerbeak in order to focus on her own career.
Released in 2005, Dessa's debut solo EP False Hopes was listed as one of the top local albums of the year by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, despite being a mere 15 minutes long. Her first solo album A Badly Broken Code was released five years later, with its single including "Dixon's Girl" and "The Chaconne," and in 2011, the artist released Castor, the Twin, a remix album featuring new arrangements of songs released on previous projects. In 2013, Dessa released her second full-length album Parts of Speech that made its debut in Billboard's Top 200, while in 2018, the singer/songwriter released her third full-length album Chime, a recording that landed at number three on Billboard's Independent Charts and was listed as one of NPR Music's "40 Favorite Albums of 2018 (so far)." The following year, Dessa recorded concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra, a collaboration that led to a live album released that November 2019, and in January of 2021, she released "Rome," the first title in her IDES Series – a project in which she debuted a new single on each 15th day of the month for the first half of the year.
Dessa plays her Davenport engagement on April 14, admission to the 8 p.m. concert is $20, and tickets are available by visiting TheRaccoonMotel.com.
