Daya

United States 🎤 Singers

Daya arrived with Hide Away in 2015 and briefly made it feel like pop music remembered what conviction sounded like. The Pittsburgh-born singer-songwriter was barely a teenager when she started writing music, and there's something almost unfair about releasing a debut that catchy and that assured before most people have figured out what to major in. Her voice has a smokiness that sounds like it belongs to someone twice her age, which creates this interesting tension with lyrics that are achingly young and earnest. She scored a massive feature on Chainsmokers' Don't Let Me Down — arguably one of the biggest songs of 2016 — and then proved it wasn't a fluke with her debut album Sit Still, Look Pretty. The challenge after a start that good is figuring out how to sustain the momentum, and Daya has spent the years since navigating the particular difficulty of growing up in public while also growing as an artist. The voice was always there. The rest is still becoming.