SHEROES

Following the heartbreaking loss of Mimi Parker of Low who passed away due to ovarian cancer on November 5th, 2022, SHEROES host Carmel Holt took to social media to gather song requests and remembrances from fans, collaborators, and fellow musicians, reached out to Minnesota radio hosts for guest DJ spots, and spoke to Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, who produced Low's 2013 album The Invisible Way. The result is a moving two-hour communal tribute to Mimi, that includes an encore presentation of her SHEROES interview from January 2022, where she had first revealed her cancer diagnosis to the public.

**Special thanks to Low and Sub Pop Records for granting permission to release this radio episode as a podcast, with full songs intact.

The multi-Grammy winning and internationally acclaimed Mexican artist Natalia Lafourcade joins Carmel Holt to discuss her first album of original material in seven years, De Todas las Flores. Natalia Lafourcade hails from the Mexican state of Veracruz. She is the daughter of two musicians, and grew up studying and playing several instruments, including piano, flute, saxophone, singing and guitar. Natalia joined her first band while still in high school, a pop music group called Twist, but came into her own within a few years, releasing her 2002 self titled debut - a combo of latin, pop, and bossa nova, which earned Natalia her first Latin Grammy award as best new artist. Over the past two decades, Natalia has gone on to win 13 Latin Grammys, and two Grammy awards, has been nominated nearly three times that number between the two awards, and has become one of the most successful singers to emerge from Latin America, earning international acclaim. Across her nine albums, Natalia evolved her sound from original songs rooted in pop, rock, latin rhythm, and bossa nova, to, in recent years, exploring more traditional music and songs of Mexico and Latin america. Now, twenty years after her debut, and seven since her last album of all original material, Natalia Lafourcade is back with her tenth studio release, De Todas las Flores - or, Of All the Flowers, which sees her stepping into a new realm of her sound and her songcraft with a new group of players including guitarist Marc Ribot, and Fiona Apple’s bassist Sebastien Steinberg.

Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and producer Courtney Marie Andrews sits down with Carmel Holt on the heels of releasing her eighth album, Loose Future, to both discuss her newest work, and share the journey that led her here. From growing up as a latchkey kid in Phoenix, Arizona, raised by a single mom, her grandmother, and surrounded by a family of women, to founding her first band in her early teens as a feminist punk rocker, to hitting the road by age 17 to pursue music. We learn how her sound has evolved, and how she has learned to navigate a still male-dominated music industry.

Tegan and Sara return to SHEROES, this time as the featured guests, joining Carmel Holt to discuss their 10th studio album Crybaby, and what this chapter in the Tegan and Sara story is all about. They go deep about Sara's newest role as mom to a newborn, and the new questions it raises about what the future looks like, lessons learned from the pandemic pause in touring, and the importance of swinging big to pave the way for women and LQBTQ voices in music.

An in-depth conversation with the multi-talented Maya Hawke - currently best known as an actress (Stranger Things, Do Revenge) but who is quickly becoming as beloved as a musician and songwriter. Maya sits down with Carmel Holt to discuss her second album Moss, and how her hunger for life manifests in her boundless creative energy. A brilliant young woman who won the gene-pool lottery as the daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, Maya opens up about how wonderful, yet complicated, the life of a professional family can be, how it is to walk through the world in her "girl body", and how she freely approaches her gender presentation as play.

Award-winning and Grammy-nominated blues, soul and Americana singer Shemekia Copeland joins Carmel Holt to discuss her 11th album, Done Come Too Far, and the SHERO's journey she's been on since her teens when she first took the stage to open for her father, the Texas-bluesman Johnny Copeland. Nearly 25 years into her career, Shemekia has always used music to confront tough issues, especially for women, and her latest album completes a trilogy of albums addressing issues like racism, xenophobia, and gun violence, alongside messages of hope and lighthearted humor.

As we celebrate the release of Cool It Down, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' fifth, and first album in nine years, Carmel Holt welcomes the iconic front-woman, songwriter, and vocalist Karen O for an in-depth, SHEROES conversation. While talking about the joy and inspiration behind the new album, Karen opens up about the struggles she's had in the (still) male dominated world of rock to be taken seriously as an artist and writer, the ways she has carved out a space for herself, and the life-affirming effect of seeing more and more Asian American and Pacific Islander women emerge as forces in indie rock.

On this episode of SHEROES, Amy Ray sits down with Carmel Holt in Nashville on the day between receiving an Americana Music Award with Indigo Girls and the release of her 10th solo album, If It All Goes South. Listen in as they discuss her journey as a queer feminist musician and the importance of intersectional feminism, the role that her solo work has had to play for her creative expression, aging as a woman, and the song Amy wrote for their mutual friend and radio SHERO, the late Rita Houston.

On this special episode of SHEROES, host Carmel Holt bring Tegan and Sara together with their SHERO Ani DiFranco for the very first time to discuss her landmark live album Living In Clip, which celebrates its 25th Anniversary this year.

As a long time fan of the band Low, Carmel Holt realized that she hadn't heard many (or perhaps any?) interviews that focused on drummer, singer, and songwriter Mimi Parker. When they sat down together for an interview back in January of this year, Carmel couldn’t have anticipated how important and rare this conversation would be. In addition to hearing about her nearly three decade journey with Low, the band she co-founded and has been in with her husband Alan Sparhawk since 1993, and the new high water mark of their latest album - 2021’s Hey What - what Mimi Parker opens up and shares with us in this very special SHEROES interview was something she had not yet discussed publicly. And as their U.S. tour starts back up in less than a month, it’s an amazing time to hear this SHERO’S journey.