MNDR

Amanda Warner has a crush on us. Well, she’s fallen for one aspect in particular. “Chicago music is my dogma,” punned the budding, buzzy young singer, known onstage as MNDR. She’s got a thing for juke and house, but the city’s scrappy punk underground spat out one of her all-time favorites: Mahjongg. Of its latest LP, she blogs, “[It’s] making my mind melt chrome tear drops.”

Though Warner started on the West Coast and now calls NYC home, she spent some time this past August in Humboldt Park, where she set up shop at Minbal Studios and got to work assembling a backing band. Late next month, she’ll return to rehearse that group through her IDM-informed dance-pop while on break from a North American tour supporting Chromeo. (For this show she’s solo.)

Not a bad run for a new artist with just an EP and a couple of singles to her name. Then again, this is the same cool voice cooing “Je te plumerai la tête” in between Q-Tip verses on “Bang Bang Bang,” the infectious single on Mark Ronson’s new album. It’s safe to say your career’s on the ascent when the man who effectively made Amy Winehouse makes you the face of his band.

Like Ronson, Warner cherry-picks her collaborators. In the studio, she’s abetted by producer Peter Wade (a full-length debut is due next year), and live she’s draped by designer Jamie Carreiro’s video art. The bubbly singer is a self-confessed “mega-nerd” when it comes to tech gear—just another aspect of the game she’s already mastered.

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