Kristina Boswell is a seafaring musician, with a voyager's soul.
She lives at sea in the Keys, currently floating around the waters of Marathon. On her sailboat, she makes music as a solo artist under the stage name K Boswell.
A West Palm Beach native, she moved around with her family while growing up. At one point, they lived in Iowa for some time. She also spent time in Orlando, playing in the music scene there before moving to Austin, Texas, where she lived for 15 years.
That’s where she branched out musically and developed her sound: she plays psychedelic rock, with has an affinity for electronic music.
"When I got to Austin, it was just so magical because there's original music everywhere, and everyone's really good too,” she said. “I put myself through music school, I was like, 'I need to up my game a little bit.'”
Her indie sensibilities align with NPR's Tiny Desk Contest, which aims to highlight unsigned, independent artists of all genres across the U.S. She is among more than 100 South Florida musicians who took part in this year's edition — and who will find out this month who will be crowned the winner.
Boswell sat with “On Your Side”, the song she submitted for the contest, for quite some time. She can’t quite pin down why she submitted that song, but she was feeling good about it for a while and decided to send it in.
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The song channels the sense of voyaging and traveling that appears throughout her music and it reflects her nomadic lifestyle. In February 2020, Boswell bought a sailboat. She wasn’t planning on becoming a liveaboard, but the COVID-19 pandemic upended her plans.
But transience has been intertwined with her creative process and it helps her to move around. “I guess, maybe I'm more physical about it; If I feel stuck, I wanna go somewhere," she said.
Moving down to the Keys on her boat changed her musical process entirely. Over the years she's been a part of multiple bands such as The Barbarian, Kay Odyssey and No Mas Bodas. But her living situation forced her to put those projects on hold, leading her to dive more into music production on her computer. Boswell describes the music under her solo project as an evolving sound. She calls it avant-garde indie-pop.
“ Because it's kind of different in its own way, so electronic in nature, but then I'm using electric guitar too,” she said.
She enjoys being able to freely make and put out music. She doesn’t have to go into a studio or confer with bandmates. But she admits she misses in-person collaborations and live audiences.
“ I do miss the energy of other people and also having other opinions 'cause like, I'm just sitting here on the sea making stuff,” Boswell said.
Boswell said it would be amazing to win the Tiny Desk Contest. It would offer her more more freedom and exposure to play more. “ I like that anyone can enter it and there's no fee to enter it," she said. "I think that’s very special.”
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