29-year-old Nashville-based singer Adia Victoria is making her mark on the southern-rock and old-school-country scene. Born and raised in South Carolina, she moved to Nashville by way of New York and Atlanta. Her primitive songs on misery, madness, hope beyond reason and the eponymous South are heavily influenced by Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Patsy Cline. A gifted poet and songwriter, Adia tells stories in her music. She got into the music of raw Delta blues legends Robert Johnson and Junior Kimbrough, a discovery that helped her make sense of being black and from the South in a way she never had before.

“I don’t know nothing ‘bout Southern belles/ But I can tell you something ‘bout Southern hell,” she sings on “Stuck in the South,” a swampy ballad from her debut three-song EP, Sea of Sand, which she released in the spring of 2015.