Arima Ederra

Las Vegas, poetry nights, and ten years of groundwork

Arima Ederra was raised in Las Vegas by Ethiopian immigrant parents and has worked out of Los Angeles for years now. Writing came before singing: she started out reading at open-mic poetry nights, and music only gradually took over as the main outlet. The pattern has stuck — she describes herself as multidisciplinary rather than a musician who happens to do other things, and has said plainly that she is a better musician when she has somewhere else to pour herself into.

Her first substantial release was the 2016 EP Temporary Fixes, which set R&B against more experimental production and circled around temporality and mortality — themes she has not since abandoned. Speaking to i-D about her upbringing, she traced a rebellious streak back to Las Vegas, and framed her work as a way of carrying her ancestors' stories rather than simply her own. Her reference points run wider than music: she cites Octavia Butler and Kathleen Collins among the Black women writers and film-makers who shape how she builds a world around a record.

An Orange Colored Day and the terms she set

Her debut album proper, An Orange Colored Day, landed on 5 October 2022, six years after the EP. Bandcamp Daily, which made it album of the day, read it as a set of love letters to family, lovers, her own childhood and Ethiopian culture, built from acoustic guitar, stacked electric harmonies and a thread of reggae. The lead single, 'Portals', dealt with unrequited love over very little instrumentation. 'Steel Wing' honoured her father's journey as a refugee and included a recitation in Amharic.

The record took a long time partly because it kept being rewritten. Ederra has described it going through several versions as she worked through grief, including a period spent in Europe looking for distance from it. Her account of healing in that interview was deliberately unromantic — purging the feeling, writing it down, letting it go, and not expecting the process to run in a straight line. Teo Halm, who produced much of it, became the collaborator she has returned to ever since.

RCA, and fifteen tracks made in three countries

Her major-label debut came in December 2024 with a two-song release on RCA: 'Oh God', featuring Mereba, and 'Really Tired', both produced by Halm. The pairing was presented as a release valve for emotion accumulated across years of grim news cycles, which turned out to be the opening statement of a much larger project.

A Rush to Nowhere followed on 6 March 2026 — fifteen tracks, forty-eight minutes, recorded through 2024 in Lake Arrowhead in California, in Havana and in Oaxaca. Halm executive produced, with Caleb Laven, Solomonophonic, Rahm Silverglade and the brothers Marshall and Parker Mulherin among the other producers, and Ederra credited on production herself. Two singles preceded it: 'You're My' on 21 January 2026 and 'Gemini Eyes' on 3 March.

She wrote it while travelling and assembled it from memories, journal entries and flat statements rather than a narrative, composing through time instead of along it. Her stated starting point was the feeling of being sold something and handed bad news simultaneously. Individual songs arrived by whatever route was available: 'Heard What You Said' began as a melody in the shower; 'First Time' and 'Wrapped Inside Your Love' came out of the Lake Arrowhead cabin, which she had rented with collaborators; 'Shine' was built with the Mulherins around a handwritten note from her partner, who ended up contributing lyrics. Minnie Riperton, Joni Mitchell and Prince were the records in the room.

Where the 2022 album was stripped back, she calls this one grandiose and intimate at once, and says she wanted listeners to get the catharsis without the resolution — to spark a question and grant permission to slow down.

Where she stands in October 2026

The album gave her the best reviews of her career. Pitchfork rated it 8.0, with Stephen Kearse singling out the fusion of folk and R&B and placing it alongside Mereba's The Breeze Grew a Fire and Cleo Reed's Cuntry. Earmilk's Angel Cook, reviewing on release day, focused on the restraint in her voice rather than the production around it.

Touring has run almost continuously since. In May she played the Great Escape in Brighton on the 15th, then Dot to Dot at Electric Bristol on the 23rd and the Palais in Nottingham on the 24th, before Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam on 30 May and the Mod Club in Toronto on 6 June. A North American leg followed in the autumn: the Mod Club again on 23 September, Lincoln Hall in Chicago on the 25th, the Turf Club in St Paul on the 26th, August Hall in San Francisco on 5 October and the Troubadour in West Hollywood on 8 October.

The remainder of the year is European. Les Nuits Weekender in Brussels on 30 October is followed by London Calling in Amsterdam on 31 October, a headline show at Colours in London on 3 November — the one date currently on sale — a Paris date on 5 November alongside a billing at Pitchfork Music Festival Paris, and Iceland Airwaves in Reykjavík. Songkick has her touring across six countries.

What the room is like

The most detailed account of her live show this year comes from the Great Escape, where she closed a night at Brighton's Green Door Store after hours of punk. Loud Women's reviewer noted a technical failure with her backing tracks and reckoned she owned the stage regardless, describing a fusion of soul, R&B and pop and a room that, with her presence, felt like a hug. Placing her as the calm end to a loud evening is a fair summary of how she tends to be programmed.

Fan-logged setlists are partial but consistent in shape. The Bristol show in May recorded 'Gemini Eyes' and 'Shine'; the August Hall set in San Francisco on 5 October logged 'In This Life', 'First Time', 'Shine' and 'Wrapped Inside Your Love' before 'Portals' from the 2022 album. The new record supplies the body of the set and the older material closes it out.

Festival copy for her London Calling appearance describes the live approach the same way the records do — understated arrangements, warm and unhurried vocals, and an attempt to stay emotionally present while everything else speeds up.