The Austin 100: Your Smith

By Stephen Thompson

Published March 5, 2019 at 5:01 AM EST

Hometown: Los Angeles, California

Genre: Rock

Why We're Excited: Your Smith is the invention — reinvention, really — of the former Caroline Smith, a singer-songwriter who changed her name and recast herself as a more freewheeling, laid-back, risk-taking version of the performer she once was. The new identity gives her music a fresh sense of play, as evidenced by "The Spot," a breezy jam that morphs from Sheryl Crow-style summer pop to a kinetic chorus with agreeable echoes of Luscious Jackson.

Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)

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