We have been following heka’s music since her tentative beginnings in 2021, and over the past five years, the young artist has grown and increasingly refined her emotive, elegant musical style. heka is the project of Florence-born, London-based multidisciplinary artist, songwriter and producer Francesca Brierley. Working across music, visual art, creative computing and live performance, she makes intimate, shape-shifting songs somewhere between folk, ambient, electronic music and 70s-infused rock. Her work is rooted in collage, combining acoustic and electronic textures, field recordings, loops, fragments of speech and found sounds with songwriting that moves between the personal and the abstract. In 2020, heka released the self-produced digital track redwoods (a few interesting facts about sequoias), followed in 2021 by the EP (a). In late 2021, she released no one through Fire Talk’s Open Tab imprint, followed in 2022 by High Tide, a collaboration with GG Skips released through Slow Dance Recordings. That year she made her first European festival appearance at Sonic City in Belgium, selected by Black Country, New Road. In 2023, heka signed with Practise Music and released swan songs, a six-track EP, followed, in 2024, by In Your Garden // Swallow, a limited 7-inch collaboration with Saint Jude through Slow Dance Recordings, creating the artwork herself. In 2025, Brierley formed Dorothy with Marco Pini and Jude Woodhead. Their debut EP Sea Songs was released through Angel Tapes, Fire Talk’s emerging-artists imprint. Alongside this, heka began exploring her Italian and English identities more directly through Cantavi d’amore // Each Spring and in July 2026 she released her second double single in Italian, Tutto l’amore che ho dato ti ha cercato // M’hai parlato tante volte così . Today, Francesca releases the first installment from her debut album, Pure Music.
Continua a leggere
