Dessa/Sombear

A true wordsmith in the old-fashioned sense of the word, Dessa has built her band like she's built her audience — slowly but surely. Her music benefits from the foundation of language skills that she developed early in her life. As a result, she comes off as something like an urban Ani DiFranco. Her lyrics about self-empowerment get a good boost from the talented jazz and R&B players in her band. She made her full-length debut with 2010's A Badly Broken Code, an autobiographical album of rag-tag hip-hop on which she alternates between spoken word diatribes and heady raps. Because she so completely rearranged the songs from the album when she played them live, she decided to re-record some of them for her terrific follow-up album, 2011's Castor, the Twin. Expect to hear these songs along with tunes from her new album, Parts of Speech. (Niesel)