Born Niia Bertino, Niia is a Needham, MA-born, Los Angeles-based classically trained composer, pianist and vocalist. Deeply rooted in jazz, her work blends elegance, edge and a timeless voice with razor-sharp, seemingly lived-in songwriting. Bertino’s previously released work has received praise from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Interview Magazine, and Harper’s Bazaar.
The Los Angeles-based artist’s recently released, fifth album, the Spencer Zahn co-produced V is the culmination of years spent experimenting at the intersection of tradition and reinvention. Existing in the tension between control and collapse, V sees her seamlessly bending the electronic textures of contemporary, experimental pop with the interplay that live, jazz-rooted musicianship. The album’s arrangements stretch — sometimes restrained, sometimes theatrical– but always with intention. As a classically trained musician, who grew up watching Italian cinema, Bertino explains, “I pulled from the harmonic language of jazz pianists like Bill Evans and from the psychological atmosphere of film scores.”
Arguably, one of Bertino’s most personal albums to date, V thematically explores the full spectrum of the self — self-harm,. self-delusion, self-awareness and in rare moments, self-love. “Not in a moralizing way, but in a very human one,” she adds. “The good and bad live side by side, often in the same verse. One minute I’m performing heartbreak like it’s a role I’ve rehearsed, the next I’m quietly admitting I caused the whole thing. That contradiction is the truth.”
V‘s latest single “Pianos and Great Danes” is a mesmerizing and mind-bending mix of propulsive, rave-inspired drum ‘n’ bass grooves, piano-driven jazz, experimental pop and soul that captures its narrator’s desperately unhinged psychological state with an uncanny precision, while being remarkably cinematic. Thematically exploring sex as an escape, Bertino says the song is “closer to a film score than anything from the Great American Songbook,” Niia says.
“Written like a monologue with chord changes, it leans into space and narrative, letting the harmony suggest the emotional shifts,” she continues. “Embracing emotional residue, there’s a chaotic feeling where the only way out is to melt through the track.”