Zoey Tess

Zoey Tess is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and producer whose music sits at the crossroads of Americana, folk rock and alternative rock. Rooted in the tradition of socially conscious songwriting, her work pairs intimate, piano-led storytelling with a raw and expansive musical language shaped by the protest music of the 1960s and ’70s and the fearless alternative voices of the 1990s.

Born in South Florida and raised in Connecticut, Tess was drawn to music from an early age. She began playing piano at four and later studied classical piano, violin and voice. As a teenager, she attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts for musical theatre and began writing and recording her own songs.

After briefly attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, Tess chose a less conventional education. Drawn more to hands-on learning than the classroom, she returned to Connecticut, joined a jazz-fusion band and began working in a recording studio, where she spent roughly two years immersed in the day-to-day mechanics of making records. She helped set up sessions, ran gear, tracked artists in Pro Tools and absorbed the technical and creative sides of recording firsthand. At night, she wrote and recorded her own music in the studio basement, eventually turning the space into a makeshift apartment.

The experience became an informal apprenticeship in recording, engineering and production. Working alongside musicians and observing sessions from the inside gave Tess an understanding of record-making that continues to inform her work as a songwriter, pianist and producer.

Tess cites Fiona Apple, Ani DiFranco, Joni Mitchell, Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan as central influences on her songwriting and artistic identity. From Joni Mitchell and Townes Van Zandt, she draws a reverence for lyrical craft and emotional precision; from Dylan, a belief in songwriting as a vehicle for social observation and protest; and from Fiona Apple and Ani DiFranco, an instinct for fearless, deeply personal writing and unconventional musical expression. Those influences converge in Tess’s own work, where folk tradition, confessional songwriting, alternative rock and piano-led arrangements meet in a distinctly modern voice.

On March 27, 2026, Tess released her debut studio album, There’s Gonna Be a Reckoning. Recorded at Clubhouse Studio in Rhinebeck, New York, the seven-song collection confronts authoritarianism, gun violence, religious hypocrisy, environmental destruction and societal inequality while searching for humanity and hope amid political and cultural upheaval.

The album was produced by Spencer Hattendorf and engineered by Hattendorf and Clubhouse Studio owner Paul Antonell, with mixing by Grammy-winning producer and engineer Mario J. McNulty and mastering by Grammy-winning engineer Chris Gehringer of Sterling Sound. Grammy-nominated cellist Dave Eggar contributed cello and viola to the project.

There’s Gonna Be a Reckoning marked Tess’s emergence as a distinctive voice in contemporary American protest music, blending folk traditions with atmospheric production, cinematic arrangements and the urgency of alternative rock.

In May 2026, Tess followed the record with The Fault Line Sessions (Live from Clubhouse Studio), a six-track live project that strips the music back to piano, voice and orchestral strings. Performing alongside a string quartet featuring cellist Tiger Darrow, the sessions revisit songs from her debut alongside interpretations of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Farewell, Angelina.”

Recorded live at Clubhouse Studio, the project was accompanied by a series of performance videos, placing the focus on the immediacy of musicians playing together in a room and allowing Tess’s voice, piano and songwriting to take center stage.

Beyond the studio, Tess is a member of Artists For Action, a coalition of artists, actors and creators advocating for gun violence prevention. Her work reflects many of the same convictions found in her songwriting: a belief that music can serve not only as expression, but as witness, connection and, when necessary, protest.

Whether behind a piano, inside a recording studio or writing about the uneasy realities of contemporary life, Zoey Tess approaches music as both an intimate form of storytelling and a means of making sense of the world around her.