She may not be a household name (at least not yet) but Midwest singer, emcee, spoken word artist & author Dessa has been garnering some high praise of late, and from some well respected quarters. NPR likened her "old-fashioned high-quality singer-songwriter" skills to that of Joni Mitchell and Rosanne Cash while the Utne Reader lauded the sole female member of the  Minneapolis Doomtree hip-hop collective as "A one-woman powerhouse...with a literary sensibility and an aversion to genre clichés."

Of the artist born Maggie Wander, the Chicago Tribune wrote,  "Dessa sings, raps, rolls out rhymes like an accomplished poetry-slam veteran, thinks like the former philosophy student and published author she is, and commands the stage with the expressiveness of a performance artist."

Released early last year, her critically acclaimed debut full-length A Badly Broken Code became a staple at college radio and was a favorite with both Amoeba customers and staffers -- myself included. The aforementioned Chicago Tribune was among those to include her record in their 2010 year-end top ten albums list. The album was the artist's long anticipated follow up  to her attention grabbing 2005 introduction to the hip-hop world, the five-song Doomtree release False Hopes.