When Kristi Lowe first released a song into the world, she wasn’t thinking about airplay or playlists. She was fifteen, navigating an impossible family crisis, and music was a lifeline. Her debut single I Need More Time, written with her older sister Jenna and produced with local electronic heavyweights GoodLuck, was less of a career launch and more of a call to action — one that South Africans answered, sending the song up the iTunes charts in a matter of hours.
That track — and the heartbreak it carried — introduced Kristi to the public. But it doesn’t define her.
Now in her mid-twenties, based in Cape Town, Kristi is entering a new chapter. One built not on tragedy, but on self-discovery, artistic freedom, and an unfiltered willingness to say the quiet parts out loud. Her music doesn’t just speak about loss, though it doesn’t shy away from it, but about everything that comes after: the slow healing, the fragile hope, the quiet joy of making peace with your past.
“I’m finally making the music I want to make,” she says. “For the first time, it feels like my music is a true representation of me.”
You can hear that clarity in her new work. Her sound — a rich blend of retro-soul, jazz, and pop — draws inspiration from artists like Amy Winehouse, Etta James, Olivia Dean, Adele and RAYE, but what she’s creating is uniquely her own. There’s a certain intimacy to her latest releases, I’m Fine. and Medicated (both early singles from her upcoming debut album), that feels less like performance and more like confession. Not in a heavy, oversharing way, but in the sense that she’s finally comfortable letting the listener in.
Her debut album a glimpse inside my mind is due in August, and if the pre-releases are any indication, it’s going to be an emotionally articulate and sonically adventurous listen. Spanning themes of grief, womanhood, healing, and personal reckoning, the album is less of a linear narrative and more of a curated diary — where vulnerability doesn’t ask for pity, just presence. Long-time collaborator and producer Blake Hellaby has been instrumental in shaping the album’s sound — and as Kristi puts it, “without him, this record wouldn’t be what it is.”
It’s also a long time coming. After stepping back from music in her teens to process her sister’s death, Kristi spent years unsure whether she’d return. “Jenna was the reason I started singing. When she was gone, I didn’t know if I still had a reason,” she says. That uncertainty, compounded by the more recent passing of her father, could have silenced her. Instead, it became something she wrote through — and out of.
Live, Kristi’s presence has that same unassuming power. Whether she’s holding down a sold-out Café Roux set or slipping into the low-lit intimacy of The Commons or The Athletic Club & Social, she doesn’t need to demand attention. She holds it. She earns it. One line, one verse, one room hushed into stillness at a time. Her shows feel less like gigs and more like shared spaces — where people come to listen, feel, and maybe exhale some of what they’ve been holding.
Next up is her first international headline performance at London’s Brixton Jamm on 11 July — a milestone that feels significant not because of its scale, but because of what it represents: Kristi stepping into a new space, on her own terms, with a body of work that is fully, finally hers.
Kristi Lowe doesn’t need to raise her voice to be heard. She’s found a home in her sound, and in doing so, she’s offering listeners something quietly radical: music that doesn’t escape the hard stuff, but moves through it with grace, honesty, and a hand outstretched.
You just have to be ready to take it.
