Singer ALA.NI Releases New Single “Summer Meadows” | WATCH NEW VIDEO!
ALA.NI Celebrates Her Caribbean Heritage On
New Single + Video “Summer Meadows”
June 11, 2025 – Today, Paris-based singer/songwriter ALA.NI releases new single “Summer Meadows” via No Format Records, her second new song of the year following last month’s “Something You Said.” Drawing from a rich tapestry of influences – from calypso, to jazz, to bossa nova – the track is an intimate, heartfelt homage to her time spent living in Jamaica. The song also arrives with a music video which further celebrates her Caribbean heritage by effortlessly weaving her music with footage from Trinidad’s 1959 Carnival.
“I definitely wrote this one under my duvet, wishing for sunshine,” shares ALA.NI. “It was December 2023, and mentally, I was back in Jamaica. The contrabass you hear is actually Clément Petit on the cello, while the carnivalesque trumpets and horns were played by Okiel McIntyre, a great kid I met playing music in Jamaica. I needed someone who knew what Caribbean sunshine feels like! I called him out of the blue — and he just happened to be flying into Paris to play with The Skatalites a few days later, so I grabbed him.”
The track takes inspiration from the two and a half years she spent traveling across Barbados, Grenada – where her parents grew up – and Jamaica, a trip that helped her find a renewed sense of self. Music flowed naturally, and she found herself collaborating with many of the Caribbean’s most prominent artists. Back in Paris, she channeled the energy she felt on this journey – thinking of the sunshine, heat, beauty and soul of these islands.
Born to Grenadian parents and raised in London, ALA.NI comes from a storied musical background, her great-uncle being Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchison, an infamous cabaret icon of the pre-WWII era. Since emerging with her debut You & I in 2016 – a self-produced set of exquisitely restrained torch songs that earned her a performance on Later… with Jools Holland and a Tiny Desk Concert – ALA.NI has built a reputation as a distinctive voice beyond easy classification. Her 2020 follow-up ACCA layered beatbox and vocal textures into dense, intricate arrangements, drawing contributions from figures like LaKeith Stanfield and Iggy Pop and earning acclaim from Associated Press, NYLON, The FADER and many more. Along the way, she has collaborated and performed with artists as diverse as Mary J. Blige, Blur, Nitin Sawhney, Andrea Bocelli, Chassol and Jon Batiste.
Photo Credit: Jerome Witz
Missing Piece Group