ALY TADROS

The Fits

alytadros.com

On her second album, Tadros is nothing if not elusive, a storyteller determined to kick dirt on her footprints and throw us off the trail. Then, she’s always been tough to pin down. The Texas native spent time in Egypt, Spain and Mexico before settling in Austin, and she brings to her harrowing fingerpicked jazz-noir songs echoes of each country. One minute, she’s vulnerable and needy, imploring, “Say that you’re sweet on me,” and the next, she’s confessing, “I did a bad thing,” grinning like some unrepentant femme fatale. Singing over little more than upright bass, strings and her own acoustic instruments—guitar, ukulele and something called a vihuela—she spins little mysteries for us to unravel.