In addition to my bands LEASHY & The Patti Fiasco, I perform solo, produce, and engineer as Alysia Kraft. I teach project-based lessons from my Fort Collins home studio THE WILD SWEET ORANGE. If you’re interested in learning songwriting, let’s create an EP together. Curious about performing? We’ll work on finding your unique voice and on-stage energy and get you ready to rock the stage. I design and teach workshops for youth and adults and LOVE to produce and engineer albums for other artists/bands. I’m also very grateful to work with an amazing music non-profit called Sound Affects.

ALYSIA KRAFT BIO

Having amassed devoted regional followings for projects Leashy, Whippoorwill, and The Patti Fiasco as a celebrated songwriter and incomparably magnetic frontwoman, Kraft has sold out most of Colorado’s big stages and directly supported icons Bon Jovi, Blondie, Nathanial Rateliff and Bonnie Raitt on significantly bigger ones. Embracing the complexities of growing up queer on a cattle ranch in small-town Wyoming and choosing to love within a landscape that didn’t always love back, Kraft’s solo debut “First Light” (2022) was lush, open-hearted, and thoughtfully hook-adorned– with soundscapes as dimensional as Kraft’s western upbringing and the liberated narratives contained therein.

Produced by Kraft and J.Tom Hnatow, First Light charted third on Colorado radio in 2022 (alongside giants The Lumineers and Nathaniel Raitliff), won Best Original Song from the LA International Independent Film Festival, and earned Kraft one of nine inaugural Sonic Guild Grants in Colorado. The Colorado Playlist nominated First Light for a 2022 best album, and Kraft was named a NIVA Artist to Watch in 2023 and won the Colorado Sound Award’s Outstanding Live Performer in 2023. Kraft is a rare songwriter who can hush a crowd with an intimate solo set or bring fervor to a packed stadium. While she toured First Light’s folky and ethereal pop songs solo, her follow up EP Electric Blooms introduces LEASHY as a live power trio. It’s power pop colliding with premonitions of punk. It’s Kraft wielding the electric guitar as an expressive tool as freely as her high kicks and clearly having the most fun yet.

FULL STORY

Alysia Kraft (she/they) grew up on a small family-run cattle ranch in Wyoming and graduated from from a K-12 school with eleven classmates she’d mostly known since toddlerdom. At the time, Kraft was a determined visual artist and a freakishly good basketball player who earned a Division 1 full-ride despite her (small but scrappy) stature. Beginning her music career at 22 with a very grassroots determination to bring music places it didn’t already exist, Alysia built devoted followings for projects The Patti Fiasco and Whippoorwill, and later toured and shared stages with a spectrum of icons from Bon Jovi, to Blondie to Bonnie Raitt to Big Thief. She released seven regionally-acclaimed independent records before being signed to sonaBLAST! for her 2022 solo debut, First Light. A fiercely community-oriented artist, Kraft is a prolific collaborator, producer, educator, and advocate for the queer, sober, and artist communities of Colorado. She offers private instruction in songwriting, production, performance from her studio THE WILD SWEET ORANGE and teaches workshops for youth and adults.