BANKS

BANKS, short for Jillian Banks, crafts moody alternative pop with shades of contemporary R&B. The singer and songwriter emerged in the early 2010s with a handful of downtempo, alternative R&B-flavored tracks that helped build a cross-genre audience. Her 2014 album Goddess, featuring her breakthrough platinum single "Beggin for Thread," peaked just outside the Top Ten on the Billboard 200 and earned a gold certification, and she followed up two years later with The Altar, which maintained her placement in the chart's upper reaches. BANKS expanded her sound palette with her third and fourth LPs, III and Serpentina, respectively released in 2019 and 2022, and in 2024 released contrastingly brash and heartsick early previews of her fifth album, Off with Her Head.

Jillian Rose Banks started writing as a teenager in her native Tarzana, California after a friend gave her a keyboard. For years, she wrote and played as a personal release, but she uploaded "Before I Ever Met You" -- a sleek, low-key track that sounded like the work of someone who had grown up listening to Fiona Apple and Massive Attack -- in early 2013. Within a matter of months, the Los Angeles native was releasing singles on Good Years (in the U.K.) and the reactivated Harvest (in the U.S.), including "Warm Water" (produced by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs) and "Fall Over." That September, she released a four-track EP, London, as she was opening for the Weeknd during a North American tour.

Her full-length debut, Goddess, which featured collaborations with producers Justin Parker and Shlohmo and additional work with Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, arrived in September 2014 and debuted at number 12 on the Billboard 200 chart. Harvest issued a large collection of remixes as a digital download in 2015. The following year saw the release of her much-anticipated sophomore full-length, The Altar, which featured the singles "Fuck with Myself," "Gemini Feed," and "Mind Games." The set peaked at number 17 on the Billboard 200. A fourth single, "Underdog," followed in 2017. BANKS returned in early 2019 with the synth-heavy single "Gimme," produced by Hudson Mohawke. That track landed on her aptly titled third studio album, III, which was released in July. Additional contributors included Francis and the Lights on "Look What You're Doing to Me" and producer Paul Epworth (Adele, Rihanna) on the magical "Hawaiian Mazes." A short EP, Live and Stripped, arrived in 2020.

BANKS soon began her next album cycle with 2021's "The Devil" and "Skinnydipped," which landed on her fourth full-length, 2022's Serpentina. Tied to themes of shedding old skin and embracing the new, the album was recorded during her months of pandemic isolation. "I Hate Your Girlfriend," a steely collaboration with Doechii, and "Best Friends," a downcast ballad, arrived in late 2024 with the parent album Off with Her Head, scheduled for release early the following year. ~ Andy Kellman, Rovi