Mei Semones is a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and guitarist crafting jazz-inflected indie pop in both Japanese and English. Drawing on her background in jazz guitar and her Japanese heritage, she blends inventive harmonies, intricate rhythms, and bilingual lyricism into a sound that is both intimate and exploratory.
Her music weaves together jazz, bossa nova, and indie rock—channeling influences from John Coltrane and Wes Montgomery to Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins—into songs that feel at once technically rich and emotionally immediate. On her Bayonet Records debut EP Kabutomushi, Semones explores the complexities of love—infatuation, devotion, vulnerability, and loss—through lush arrangements, expressive guitar work, and quietly powerful vocals.
“Blending everything that I like together and trying to make something new—that’s what feels most natural to me,” she says. “It’s what feels most true to who I am as an artist.”
Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Semones began playing piano at age four before moving to guitar at eleven, later studying jazz performance at Berklee College of Music. Now performing with a dynamic ensemble featuring strings, she continues to shape a distinctive musical voice that is both deeply personal and sonically adventurous.
The Makin Waves Song of the Week is "ICE SS" by the Central Jersey punk act Sally Draper.
