Anni Rossi has loved top 40 radio ever since she can remember. She had to find ways to keep herself busy growing up in a small farm town in Minnesota. She started taking violin lessons and piano as a toddler. She always looked forward to singing her own version of karaoke with Casey Kasems top 40 on Sunday nights with a microphone and a tape recorder. Her newest album, Heavy Meadow, sounds a little bit like you're scanning through the radio, although it's slightly warped and playfully dark, much like those early karaoke tapes of her singing over the top of the pops countdown. Anni says, “I used my take on familiar genres from Pop to Hip Hop to Garage Rock, borrowing production techniques and musical conventions which resulted in a handmade pop music sound.”

Anni uses the viola to craft her songs. She plugs it in and strums it like a guitar and sometimes she plays it how it was meant to be played. The result is a truly original album that plays wonderful tricks with your ears. She has also used the live circuit as her place to rehearse, experiment with ideas and develop them. She has spent considerable time on the road opening tours for Camera Obscura and The Ting Tings among others Her debut, Rockwell, shows this side of her, essentially being her one woman show caught live on tape.

Anni spent most of last winter writing, demoing and reworking her newest new songs in a tiny little room with her viola, piano and tape recorder back in Chicago. She couldn't wait to make Heavy Meadow, so she came to New York to work with composer/drummer Devin Maxwell and engineer Matt Boynton and decided to stay. They recorded the album at Matt's studio, Vacation Island in Brooklyn, a studio also used by Bat For Lashes, MGMT and Gand Gang Dance.

If you listen closely to her lyrics, sounds and themes you will see how she delights in playing tricks and is a bit of a prankster, even if she is singing about something near and dear to her or sharing her emotionally intimate ideas. “My lyrical sensibilities are now moving away from my more narrative art-songs to straight up hook-based pop lines. I think there is a slightly mischievous streak that has bubbled to the surface in some of my writing. I address dark themes, violence, conflict and agony in a playful way, it's almost like I'm winking at the listener.”

Treading new territory has certainly paid off for Anni and with Heavy Meadow, she’s sure to catch most off-guard – in a VERY good way!