Naomi Pilgrim released her debut solo single “No Gun” after years of singing backup for Lykke Li and other artists. Her debut self-titled EP, released spring 2014, saw comparisons from Sade to Lauryn Hill. Since the release of her debut EP in 2014, Naomi has performed across Europe drawing large crowds at festivals like Sweden’s Way Out West and Norway’s By:Larm.

Perhaps more importantly, she’s travelled, written, and grown. Last year Naomi returned to her childhood home of Barbados for the first time in nearly a decade. The trip was an awakening, not least musically. As Naomi puts it, “It was difficult to see how Barbados had grown into a kind of poverty I couldn’t recall from my childhood. At the same time I was reminded of the joy that can come from simplicity. It was an important trip that helped me understand how to use my Barbadian heritage in my music.”

Released today, the first single, ‘Sink Like A Stone’ (co-written with Henrik Jonzon) is inspired by African-American Eric Garner’s death in New York in 2014. Naomi says, “Eric Garner died because of the color of his skin. And despite the fact that structural racism permeates society to a point where it leads to this kind of modern-day lynching, many of us choose to ignore it. If we want to turn things around we need to fight the fear-mongering, take a good look at our history, and most importantly, start listening to each other.”