Arden Kaywin

Arden Kaywin, the singer/songwriter, well known in the indie pop world for her thoughtful, witty songwriting and her powerful voice has spent the last year prepping her much anticipated second album, Elephant in the Room due out on October 21, 2008. Her songs are soulful, often quirky creations with influences ranging from pop and alt rock to classical and funk, blended with ease. Since childhood, Arden has immersed herself in music. She attended the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Manhattan School of Music where she was classically trained. “I was totally immersed in classical music for most of my adolescence. When you’re studying classically, it’s kind of taboo to be playing or singing pop music because the technique is so different. So there I was in class perfecting Mozart, and then I would go home and write pop songs that nobody knew about”. It’s clear from one listen of her songs that Arden has many musical influences. No matter where she resided or what she studied, Arden soaked up whatever was around her— a musical sponge saturated with inspiration from fellow musicians and music lovers. “When I was a child, I was obsessed with Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. All I wanted was to sing like they did, and I would go around the house imitating them. Then in high school I discovered artists like Tori Amos, Dave Matthews Band, and the Indigo Girls. That’s when I fell in love with songwriting as a craft.” She released her first album, Quarter Life Crisis, in 2006 to critical acclaim with its pop/rock musings on life, love and twenty-something angst. Singles like “Me With Me” charmed music lovers across the country and earned a nomination for Pop Song of the Year by the 2006 Independent Music Awards. Napster featured Arden as a Hot Pick on their pop page and Smother named Quarter Life Crisis an Editor’s Pick alongside Coldplay and The Dave Matthews Band. Her songs, both old and new, have a Top 40 sensibility while maintaining an honest and often quirky lyrical insight. Arden worked with eleven-time Grammy Award winning Rafa Sardina on Elephant in the Room, the follow-up to her debut CD. The album captures her ability to blur musical boundaries with sounds that span from pop to urban and from indie to commercial while using complex arrangements that take the listener on a musical journey. In the past year, Arden has graced the stage of landmark Los Angeles venues like The Roxy, The Avalon, The Mint and The Hotel Cafe. She took the show on the road in 2006 playing to excited fans in the East Coast and Midwest and has quickly developed a core following. Arden’s songs have been featured on numerous television shows on MTV, NBC, ABC and The WB networks. She recently co-wrote and performed the theme song to a new Discovery Channel show called Deliver Me and her music can be downloaded in Starbucks Music Cafes nationwide as well as direct to your mobile phone on the Verizon V-Cast Music Service.