Jana Hunter

Bio

Baltimore-based musician Jana Hunter has been releasing music under her own name since the mid-2000s. Her band, Lower Dens, have released three full-length albums the latest of which, 2015’s Escape From Evil, combines the slippery aesthetic of 80’s pop music with songs dealing with gender fluidity and personal liberation. In 2015 Hunter wrote an essay for Cosmopolitan Magazine titled “What It’s Like to Be a Female Musician When You Don’t Identify as a Woman” in which she discusses her own gender fluidity and describes her experiences as a working musician.

“Over the years, you get a creeping sensation—which eventually develops into a queasy feeling and then a simmering rage—that no, you’re not crazy,” she writes. “Things really are harder and more repulsive than they should be, and yes, if people thought of you as man, it would be easier and you would probably be making at least some money.”