As the saying goes, never judge a book by it’s cover couldn’t be more true when it comes to Boston-based pop duo, Karmin.
Composed of Nebraska-born Amy Renee Heidemann and Maine-born Nicholas Louis “Nick” Noonan, who met at the Berklee College of Music, Karmin has gone from doing Youtube cover songs of Chris Brown and Nicky Manaj to pop music’s newest sound, with their original song, “Take it Away” being featured in the 2011 NBA Finals.
To put this in perspective, this writer is admittedly a little late to the Karmin party as I came upon them randomly at my Cleveland-area Best Buy while waiting for my online Xbox One Titanfall bundle to be processed.
As I was waiting, I decided to go over to the Electronics area. While there, this writer saw Samsung’s newest smart phone, the S5, and decided to play around with it’s features since mine was on it’s way from Verizon.
After exploring Samsung’s newest music application, “Milk” I came around to the striking Karmin cover art of their new album, “Pulses”. At first glance, I didn’t know what to expect from Karmin, as I never heard them before, but after listening to their featured song, “I Want It All” I was very intrigued.
While there are many talented female singers, Heidemann’s ability to go from singing deep ballads like “I Want It All” which has elements of both an up-tempo and catchy pop-jazz fusion and their breakout single—”Brokenhearted”—also from “Pulses” and “Neon Love”, she shows off her talented voice and good range, but also her rapping skills and rapid-fire flow heard on tracks, “I Told You So”, “Acapella”, “Fish In The Sea” and my new personal favorite, “Hello” from their début EP, shows off the duo’s on-screen chemistry and perfect yin/yang-like ability to compliment each other.
Never afraid to give the state of Nebraska a shoot-out as heard on the track, “Drifter”, “Guess you don’t know the kinda girls from NE, Husker in the game, you can call me Herbie” Karmin is helping to define a new era of pop and hip-hop.
Thanks to their new distinctive blend of upbeat sound and lyrics, Karmin doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.