photo credit: Morgan Wiley

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Born in Paris and currently based in New York, Adeline has everything she needs to make her listeners dance—a soulful siren voice, great taste in pulsing disco beats, and, most important, a bass in her hands.

But while her 2018 self-titled solo debut leaned hard into modernized mirrorball jams, her latest music introduces new elements that change everything: Adeline dug deeper into funk and emerged with her most soul-stirring music to date. On her new EP, Adi Oasis, Adeline’s new vibe is pervasive—tracks like “Whisper My Name” and “9” are splashes of pure, windows-down, funk-pop sunshine.

Coming of age in a culturally mixed Parisian suburb, Adeline inherited her love of music from her Martinique-born father. “Dancing, playing loud music and singing is what our culture revolves around,” she says. “But [I wasn’t raised] in the artsy environment people might imagine when they hear ‘Paris.’ It was a bunch of kids in the projects, blending their cultures and spending lots of time singing along to the radio.”

The bass came into the picture almost by accident— Adeline had been writing on a guitar for years. But shortly after she moved to New York, her bassist cancelled the day before a gig.

“I wasn’t really a ‘guitarist.’ I was a singer who played guitar,” she says. “But, it was only after I picked up the bass that I became a musician. The bass heroes I admired from my favorite bands were always the coolest people to me; I felt so proud to join the team of the ‘cool kids.’”

Stints touring with CeeLo Green and fronting New York club staples Escort led her to strike out on her own and truly shine. Take her new cut “Mystic Lover.” Adeline rips a squelching bassline that’d make Thundercat proud, simultaneously laying twinkling piano, cascading horns and her own crystal-clear vocals on top to build an epic slow-soul jam.

But to Adeline, making music is really about finding the right vibration—and riding it as far as she can.

“I don’t think I create anything,” she says. “We’re just here to connect with space in that moment. It’s like tweaking the antenna of an old-school TV until you get a working channel.”