Bio - 1

Allison Sounds is a musician and singer-songwriter. She blends folk, soul, rock and country in a whirlwind experience of sound. She often describes her music as “music for the heart.” She is an authentic performer who seeks to inspire and uplift audiences with her original music.

Allison sees music as a tool for healing, communication and collaboration. She has a deep interest in melodic transmutation and is drawn to creating healing spaces through harmonics, alternative tunings, vivid lyrics, rhythms and expressive vocal tones.

She started playing guitar and writing songs at 11 years old. Her grandparents were professional musicians and her parents taught her piano when she was 7 years old. She demonstrated musical aptitude at a young age. She received a few years of guitar training and learned bluegrass finger-style and basic jazz theory. She began using jazz chords and finger style guitar playing in her songwriting - and learned to record her own songs in her teen years. In high school, she played in bands and solo - performing in coffeeshops, musical venues, on street corners and at school performances.

She received a scholarship to attend Earlham College -  a private liberal arts school where she graduated with college honors. She studied the humanities, gender studies and philosophy, and continued to cultivate her writing in academic formats. During her senior year of college, she was discovered by a small record company called “Catalpa Empire” at a college open mic. Catalpa Empire helped her record, “When the Sea Spoke,” released in 2016.

After college, she traveled out west and settled in Sedona, Arizona, where she gigged professionally and worked at a coffeeshop. After Sedona, she was able to travel domestically and internationally, where she performed and taught music. She co-led a music camp in Barbados, where she also briefly collaborated with local musicians there, learning about the unique rhythmic styles of reggae and soca which began to inform her future writing.

She moved to Minneapolis where she started teaching music lessons and performing at open mics, where she met many of her collaborators and bandmates. She released her EP: Allison & the Northwoods as a collaborative project with Minneapolis musicians in 2023. In 2024, she started working on her second album, “I Was Born in Color,” released in 2025 with the help of the Minneapolis music community who connected her to “New Folk Records.”

Bio - 2

Allison Sounds is a musician and singer-songwriter. She blends folk, soul, rock and country in a whirlwind experience of sound. She often describes her music as “music for the heart.” She is an authentic performer who seeks to inspire and uplift audiences with her original music. She has released two albums and one EP:

“I Was Born in Color” (2025), “Allison & the Northwoods” (2023) and “When The Sea Spoke (2016.)