Hiatus Kaiyote

The four band members met in Melbourne, Australia. Bassist Paul Bender saw Naomi Saalfield perform a solo show and they started working together a year later. Perrin Moss and Simon Mavin joined shortly afterwards.[5] The collaboration led to Hiatus Kaiyote playing their first gig at the Bohemian Masquerade Ball among sword swallowers, fire twirlers and gypsy death core bands.[6]

In February 2012, the band opened for Taylor McFerrin in Melbourne. McFerrin was so impressed with them that he introduced their music to influential broadcaster and DJ Gilles Peterson.[7]

The band released their debut album Tawk Tomahawk independently in April 2012. It was noticed by numerous musicians including Animal Collective and Dirty Projectors,[8] and the band later received public endorsements from Erykah Badu, Questlove, and Prince, who urged their followers via Twitter to listen to the music.[9] In early 2013, Gilles Peterson named them the Breakthrough Artist of the Year at his Worldwide Music Awards in London[7] and shortly thereafter they were introduced to Salaam Remi who had just started working as an A&R executive at Sony Music. Sony gave him the opportunity to start up his own label, Flying Buddha, and his first signing was Hiatus Kaiyote. The band licensed Tawk Tomahawk to the label, adding an updated version of the song "Nakamarra" featuring Q-Tip. Following this release, the band toured extensively internationally, and were nominated in 2014 for a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance for "Nakamarra."[10] They were the first ever Australian artist to be nominated for a Grammy in an R&B category.[11] They lost out to Snarky Puppy and Lalah Hathaway's recording "Something".

In 2014, the band began working on their second album, Choose Your Weapon which was released on 1 May 2015. The review aggregator Metacritic gave the album a normalised rating of 88 out of 100, based on 6 reviews, indicating 'universal acclaim'.[13] On 9 May 2015, Choose Your Weapon debuted at number 22 on the Australian albums chart.[14] Nai Palm described the album as an "extension" of their debut, and stated she and the band had no intention to make a one-genre body of work. Many of the songs on the album started with Saalfield's original ideas that were later fleshed out by the band together. During the recording the band wanted to pay tribute to the format of a mixtape, so they incorporated interludes.[15] The album also became the band's first release to chart in the US, reaching #127 on the US Billboard 200,[16] and #11 on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.[17]

The song "Breathing Underwater" from Choose Your Weapon was nominated for a Best R&B Performance at the 58th Grammy Awards, but lost out to The Weeknd's recording of "Earned It (Fifty Shades of Gray)".[18]

Starting in early-2016, artists began sampling Hiatus Kaiyote's recordings, starting with Anderson .Paak's sample of "Molasses" in "Without You" on his album Malibu. The following year, Kendrick Lamar sampled "Atari" in "Duckworth" from his album Damn., and Drake sampled "Building a Ladder" on his song "Free Smoke" from his playlist More Life. [19] In 2018, Beyonce and Jay-Z sampled "The World It Softly Lulls" in "713" from their album, Everything Is Love.[20]

In 2017, Nai Palm released her debut solo album Needle Paw, and toured internationally in support of it.[21] The recording process of this release was very different from Hiatus Kaiyote albums, focusing on Saalfield's vocals and solo guitar. During an interview with Julie Adenuga of Beats 1 she mentioned that she thought "Needle Paw" was the name of a desert flower.[22] In an interview with Sound of Boston, Nai Palm explained that working on a solo album gave her greater flexibility to work on her guitar sounds and the challenge of releasing a more raw and personal record.[23] The cover art of the album, an abstract drawing of Saalfield, was done by Chilean artist Jowy Maasdamme, whom Saalfield discovered on Instagram.[23]

In June 2018, Nai Palm was featured on Scorpion by Drake, who has spoken highly of both her and the band. She sang a cover of "More Than a Woman" by Aaliyah, which appears at the end of Drake's song "Is There More." Drake also sampled the Hiatus Kaiyote song, "Building a Ladder," in his track "Free Smoke" on his mixtape More Life.[24][25]

On 18 October 2018, Nai revealed via her social media that she was diagnosed with breast cancer.[26] From her hospital bed recovering from a mastectomy, Nai performed a cover of Curtis Mayfield's "The Makings of You", accompanied by Paul Bender on acoustic guitar.[27] As of an interview with KCRW Berlin in 2019, she is currently cancer-free.[28]

Her bandmates, the trio of Bender, Mavin and Moss, released their own mixtape under the moniker Swooping in April 2020.[29] In addition, each of them has released music independently:

Perrin Moss's professional alias is Clever Austin. He released his debut album in 2019 for Touching Base/Wondercore Island entitled Pareidolia. [30]

Paul Bender released a solo album under the artist name The Sweet Enoughs via Wondercore Island, entitled Marshmallow.[31] Bender also produced Jaala's album, Hard Hold in 2015,[32] Vulture St Tape Gang's album Mature Themes for Childish People in 2019,[33] and Laneous's release Monstera Deliciosa (which also features Simon Mavin on keys) in 2019.[34]

Simon Mavin is a member of the band The Putbacks.[35] He produced artist Natalie Slade's album, Control (Eglo Records) in 2020.[36]

In August 2020, the Hiatus Kaiyote signed a global publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music.[37]

• Anderson Paak: "Without You" from Malibu (2016) samples "Molasses"
• Kendrick Lamar: "Duckworth" from Damn (2017) samples "Atari"
• Drake: "Free Smoke" from More Life (2017) samples "Building A Ladder"
• Beyonce and Jay-Z as The Carters: "713" from Everything is Love (2018) samples "The World It Softly Lulls"