Taken from the Spring 2020 issue of Wonderland. Order your copy of the issue now.

The music of Charlotte Dos Santos feels like grounding your heels barefoot into the earth. It hangs atmospherically in the air like the smell of rain after a thunderstorm. Her tracklists tell languid tales of “Harvest Time” and “Red Clay”, and her visuals see her winding hypnotically amidst waterfalls and shadowy birch trees in Norway. Nature is so inextricably at the beating heart of the poetic and soulful music of the Brazilian-Norwegian artist, that one play engulfs the listener in a full-body sensory experience.

“Growing up surrounded by mountains and the ocean, and having to live so in tune with the seasons has made me even more connected with it,” explains Dos Santos. But this focus on nature, our interconnectedness and awareness with it, doesn’t just refer to the physicality of it; her upcoming EP “Harvest Time”, out in March, delves into the human psyche and the universal desire to root and grow. “’Harvest Time’ has a title connected to nature, but it mostly ties to our personal growth and evolution as human beings, how we move and grow with time and nature,” she meditates. “How to grow from heartbreak and how to heal. We live so cyclically.”

Dos Santos was raised in a small town outside Oslo by her Norwegian mother and Brazilian father. “I got mostly world music and flamenco music at my mother’s house, and jazz, hip-hop and experimental electronic music from my father,” she remembers. A self-dubbed nomad who has also lived in England, New York, Valencia and Berlin, she attended Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music – her classical training evident in the inspired production flourishes and her precise, yet achingly sensual vocal prowess.

She came onto the scene back in 2017 with her critically acclaimed debut album Cleo, and her stint on buzzy YouTube channel COLORS had viewers rapturous over her jazz-inflected neo-soul, all bracing croons and tumbling keyboard composition, with commenters even lauding her likeness to “Amy Winehouse meets Little Dragon”. No small feat by a mile.

When quizzed on the emotional clarity and heartfelt tone of her songs, she admits that her music is made for “introspection, soul searching, love giving, and self- love.” And while the phrase “harvest time” might evoke imagery of the beauty and physicality of a landscape, she delves further, admitting: “The challenge with putting out new works is trusting your intuition and gut feeling and knowing that it will reach the right people. Releasing new music just needs to be with intention for me, and this one is rooted in transformation and new beginnings.” We’ll take a little of that please.