Pittsburgh singer KELS flashes jazz roots on stunning neosoul singles
How did KELS come to sing in the style of Amy Winehouse, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Corrine Bailey Rae? It started when she was 13 and her mom bought her two CDs: Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.
“I started listening to them and I was like, ‘Yes, this is what I want my voice to emulate.’ I found that my voice wasn’t really sitting with a lot of the other stuff I was singing, so it was a relief to find two amazing singers that I kind of wanted to be like when I grew up.”
KELS, who releases her second single, “No Lie,” on Friday, was born in Germany to a Navy SEAL and Army mom and moved around the United States a lot before settling in Pittsburgh when she was 5. After her parents divorced, visits with her dad meant a lot of time singing with him in the car.
“He’s a huge Andrea Bocelli fan,” said the 25-year-old KELS, whose real name is
Kelsey Hillock. “So, my earliest memories are singing a ton of Andrea Bocelli in the car with him, but also stuff like Beyonce CDs and Kelly Rowland. He also loves old rock ’n’ roll, so Rod Stewart and a variety of stuff.”
She began taking voice lessons at 13, with Robert Fire, but it was a rough go at first.
“My first year, my teacher was pretty strict,” she said. “He was like ‘You have to learn the basics, you have to learn opera, you have to learn to sing in Italian, French, German. After that, then we can focus on whatever you want to sing but you have to do this first.’ I would leave in tears sometimes just because, for my age, at that time, I was like, ‘Ugh, I wanted to have fun at singing lessons,’ but he was very adamant,
which I thank him for today.”
In middle school, she bought a keyboard at a flea market and learned the basic chords so she could start writing her own songs. In high school, she hooked up with a guitarist friend to play weddings, parties and coffee shops and put some songs on a CD.
After a year studying music business and jazz at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, she spent time that summer with her aunt in Manhattan and ventured into some jazz jam sessions. She chose to finish college at the University of Pittsburgh, studying business, with an eye toward someday running her own nonprofit. During the pandemic, she ran an afterschool program at an elementary school in Carrick while also writing music on
GarageBand and recording with producer Jacob Spitzer.
“By the summer,” she said, “we weren’t really running any in-person programming and I was like, ‘God I still feel like I’m not staying true to myself. I’m not staying true to my dream. Like, I want to do music, I want to be an artist.’ So I quit my job, in the middle of COVID, and I got a part-time job at a bakery.”
In November, she released her first single, “Closer,” accompanied by a video of a couple on a romantic rendezvous in Washington, D.C. The song was streamed more than 20,000 times on various platforms. With Spitzer’s move to LA, they worked on “No Lie” remotely, with KELS recording her vocals at ID Labs in Etna. She has an EP coming, probably in July.
In the past, she says, the stuff she recorded was “pretty scatterbrained.”
“I realized I really need to focus on a genre and I need to focus on my niche, which more of like the R&B/neosoul. It’s still pop-focused but it’s got its roots in my jazz background.”
In both singles, you can hear her jazz roots and disciplined training in her stunning control and phrasing.
KELS, who lives on the North Side, went most of last year without performing before doing a jazz gig at Con Alma and playing 1700 Penn last weekend with guitarist Brandon Lehman.
“It was so amazing to perform live again,” she said. “I didn’t realize how much I missed it, to be honest. I was actually telling some musicians the other night that we need to remember this feeling, because when you’re in the grind, you’re thinking, ‘Ugh, I have to learn this and this and this.’ Then when you don’t perform for a year and half and then you get to perform again, you’re like, ‘It’s amazing to learn new stuff!’ You have a new appreciation for performing live.”