Mia Doi Todd

Mia Doi Todd is a singer-songwriter and L.A. native. Since 1997, Todd has released ten solo albums and appeared on countless recordings with other artists, including Saul Williams, The Folk Implosion, and David J of Bauhaus. She is also part of the creative team behind local venue Zebulon Café Concert in Frogtown. For the Lockdown Listening series, Todd spoke with KCRW about the pleasures of introspection, the healing powers of music and the perfect reggae tune for a trampoline.

Mia Doi Todd has an uncanny gift for music that glides and ascends and lands smoothly, always somewhere unexpected. Over the past two decades, this quality has made the Los Angeles native a favored collaborator for a wide range of artists looking to explode the boundaries of their music—from Dntel to Laraaji to Saul Williams—and it makes her an equally compelling artist when working alone. She is a singer-songwriter who views her work more like a landscape painter, patiently bringing a world to life across the canvas.

“If you give your life to music, it doesn’t necessarily go as you planned, but it still opens this path.”. Mia Doi Todd knows all the tortuous routes of an artist’s life and documents it all on Music Life, a collection of songs reflecting on motherhood, her musical life, and more fabled imaginings. “It’s juggling the uncertainties of life, making a living, supporting a family, raising kids—all those things—and in the context of being a musician, that for me is the arc of the album.”