Lily Vakili

“compelling the way the first Patti Smith music gripped a listener, the Swans’ Jarboe enthralled or even Nico startled” (Americana Highways).

Lily Vakili is a singer, songwriter & performer whose genre-transcendent catalogue includes solo projects, multi-artist collaborations, and three releases as frontwoman for the rock n roll quintet Vakili Band.



Raised in a large multi-cultural family in Honduras, Florida, Thailand, Puerto Rico, and Iowa, Lily left home at sixteen to join a theater troupe in Minneapolis. She’s since worked as a dancer, actress, summer theater stage director, choreographer, corn detasseler, human rights researcher, waitress and lawyer. Whatever the age, the role, the place, the job, the predicament, she marked the journey by writing songs.

Lily launched her recording career as a solo artist before forming the five-member Vakili Band; releasing three studio albums, Oh Alright (produced by Ray Ketchem), Walking Sideways (produced by David Amlen), and Honey (produced by Vakili herself) while touring up and down the East Coast.

Her most recent project is the solo EP Tannersville, co-produced with Reed Turchi at Second Take Sound in NYC. Called a “casual, pensive, yet intensely luxuriant showcase” by Americana Highways, the songs from Tannersville accompanied her on her West Coast debut tour in the fall of 2024 (opening for John Douglas of Trashcan Sinatras), and the title track Photograph, landed Lily as featured artist on WFUV’s NY Slice.

A new album is in the works at Second Take Sound, produced by Turchi and due for release in fall of 2025.

“My songs speak to people who know – whether it’s about desire, love, loss or defiance – they’ve been there in their own uniquely profound, but universal way. That’s the mystery, and the hope.”