Alicia Waller’s bold album Louder, Then announces the arrival of a major new creative voice in music. 

It takes a long, wending creative journey to forge an artist with the power and soul of Alicia Waller. A songwriter and vocalist with a plush, verdant sound, she introduces herself with her first full-length album Louder, Then. Slated for release on May 29, 2026, it’s steeped in her love of contemporary R&B and jazz, filtered through a global array of influences in and outside of music. 

Co-produced by bassist/arranger Marcos Varela, an essential figure on the New York jazz scene who’s toured and recorded with the likes of the Mingus Big Band, Billy Hart, Jason Moran, Geri Allen, and Tyshawn Sorey, Louder, Then is the work of a startlingly original musician spreading her wings. Trained in opera’s bel canto tradition, Waller eventually found her way back to soul music for this debut project. It’s a sound she's embraced as a songwriter and arranger, creating a cosmopolitan aesthetic from the perspective of a woman on the move. 

With a master’s degree from New York University in international relations and music diplomacy she’s traveled around the world, investigating how music can serve as a bridge between cultures. Her curiosity has taken her to Portugal, where she absorbed the blues-like laments of fado, to the Middle East, which stoked her interest in Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language that spread across the Mediterranean after Jews were expelled from Spain at the end of the 15th century. Not coincidentally, she’s also obsessed with flamenco. Louder, Then flows out of Waller’s explorations, diving deep into her own culture's music from her distinctly global perspective. 

“I speak Spanish and a couple of other languages moderately well,” Waller says. “I’d been looking at music from South America and Latin America, across the African diaspora. That's what eventually brought me to exploring what I refer to as ‘vernacular musics,’ which is basically cultural musics from the peoples of the world. And this brought me back to exploring my culture's music, African-American vernacular music.” 

Waller grew up in the Washington, D.C. area in a family of “enthusiastic listeners” when it came to music. She marinated in Marvin Gaye and has

come to think deeply about songs like “Inner City Blues,” and “what it meant for Marvin to sing that to our community,” she says. 

Waller attended the Flint Hill School, and was determined to study music when she went off to college. Earning a scholarship to study opera at the University of Maryland she fell in love with Puccini listening to legendary soprano Leontyne Price sing an aria from “Madam Butterfly.” 

“I couldn’t believe the human voice could do that,” she says. “I decided I’ll be a soprano and sing Puccini and Verdi. And I did, and was pretty good.” 

But after earning her degree in vocal performance, she started looking for ways pursue her interest in diplomacy and international relations. Enrolled at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study she encountered pianist, composer and musicologist Kwami Coleman on faculty, and he helped set her on her far-flung path. “He said, ‘Why study classical music only from a Eurocentric perspective?’” she recalls. “‘There are many forms of classical 

music.’ That’s what really kicked off the global bent in my work, and my gravitation to ‘vernaculars’ as the unifying pursuit of my music.” 

She spent several years interpreting bel canto and various international styles within improvisational jazz settings, which is how she first bonded with Valera. “I was singing ‘Ave Maria’ classically with jazz instrumentation,” she says. “We were the youngest people in the room and found a natural affinity for that reason. Soon after, though, we recognized we spoke a similar language creatively.” 

As Waller increasingly focused on writing her own songs, she found a natural ally in Valera, a consummate musician on faculty at his alma mater, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School, and a professor of music at Montclair State University. The collaboration first bore fruit on the 2020 four-song EP Some Hidden Treasure by Alicia Waller and the Excursion. The partnership deepened with the new album, which required “not just song writing but world building,” Waller says. “We both like rich, interesting textures. We like density and conversations between parts.” 

The synergy is conspicuous on Waller’s state-of-the-art R&B, including “My Day, Part II” and “Tempo 120,” the album’s two singles. The former is a dance-floor anthem in which Waller embraces all of the ambition and moxie

that has fueled her extraordinary sojourn. It’s a banger with a groove that propels her voice to the stratosphere. The latter is an epic odyssey from the perspective of a woman making no apologies for following her muse. 

“I think a lot about the sound of a Black woman in conversation with the world,” Waller says. “With ‘Tempo 120’ I wanted to write a song that would capture the story of a woman freeing herself from societal expectations of ‘femininity.’ Instead, I wanted to play with a driving sound that is often more associated with masculinity, while telling a story that is, ironically, utterly feminist. The howl at the top says it all.” 

Another stand-out track is “Dream Song (For You)” a song that, as the title suggests, came to Waller in the midst of a deep sleep. “I woke up with a very clear melody in mind,” she recalls. “I also knew that I wanted there to be an element of haziness, like waking from a dream, which I was able to discover later through the background vocals." 

“Most of the time I have a pretty clear composition in mind, or a completed one,” she shared. “But ‘Dream Song’ evolved differently. I’d originally envisioned it with a heavy hip hop beat, but Valera said, ‘This can be a beautiful bossa nova.’ I also had an idea for a funny lead vocal at the top, which I still think is so quirky, to accompany the bass line he'd envisioned. But I knew I wanted it to sound like mermaids emerging from the water.” 

In her own way, Waller is something of a mermaid who has learned to thrive in multiple realms. Louder, Then represents a creative leap by an artist embracing her multiplicity, and her power as a vocalist and a woman. Steeped in soul, conceived in dialogue with a welter of musical idioms that evolved as protean emotional expression, Waller’s music sounds unlike anything else on the scene.