Australian singer/songwriter and producer Grace Cummings has released a cover of the 90s Fatboy Slim hit “Praise You,” originally written by Camille Yarbrough. The recording is accompanied by a dance video directed by Gil Gilmour. “Praise You” is Grace’s first release since her sophomore album entitled Storm Queen Following an incredible SXSW debut, and tours with Ezra Furman, King Gizzard, and Viagra Boys.

“No matter what happens, I’ll never get sick of this song and it will never get sick of making me happy,” Grace shares. “I’d never try to out do Camille Yarborough or Fatboy Slim… there’s no point. But to combine the two into a soul groove was something kinda our own and hopefully joyful in its own right.”

A near-lifelong musician, Cummings got her start as a drummer in a series of high school bands whose repertoire largely consisted of AC/DC and Jimi Hendrix covers. As she began writing songs of her own, she mined inspiration from Australian singer/songwriter Paul Kelly, Bob Dylan, and Spiritualized frontman J Spaceman, as well as from the traditional Irish folk music her father often played at home.“Irish melodies are some of my favorites; they go to such dark and dramatic places,” she says.

Soon after striking out as a solo artist in the late 2010s, Cummings landed a deal with Flightless Records (a Melbourne-based record label founded by former King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard drummer Eric Moore). Having attended drama school, she’s also spent much of the past decade performing in the Australian theater, and recently played the lead role in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Joanna Murray-Smith’s Berlin. Noting her eternal fondness for Shakespeare—“If anyone wants me to play Hamlet, I’ll do it”—Cummings has found her lyrical sensibilities indelibly informed by certain literary influences. “To me poems and stories are sometimes more of an inspiration than music, because they don’t give you a melody: you have to just imagine your own,” she says.

On the the making of her latest album Storm Queen, Cummings says “with this record I learned that I’m allowed to influence myself instead of taking in anyone else’s ideas. I learned to completely trust what I see and hear in my head, and I stuck with that and just focused on creating what I love the most: something real and raw and ugly and beautiful.”

Grace Cummings
Storm Queen
Tracklisting
ATO Records

1. Heaven
2. Always New Days Always
3. Dreams
4. Up in Flames
5. Freak
6. Here is the Rose
7. Raglan
8. Two Little Birds
9. This Day in May
10. Storm Queen
11. Fly a Kite

Purchase Storm Queen by Grace Cummings HERE