Brianna Carmel is a DIY musician who was born and raised in Sacramento, California. They started performing onstage at 14-years-old, through the Skip’s Music Stairway To Stardom program. As an adult, they are a big part of the Sacramento music scene, spending much of their spare time booking and promoting DIY shows under the moniker 916 Growth Gigs.
Brianna’s skills as a vocalist are where they really shine. Their complex vocal melodies hit time and time again, and when combined with such heart-wrenching lyrics, you get an artist that’s really worth their salt. They attract the attention of all sorts of musicians on a regular basis, and are very frequently asked to feature on various musical projects because of their singing abilities.
They’re in two bands, a sadcore indie pop duo called Blooming Heads, and an indie folk punk three-piece called little tiny knife. They balance both bands with their solo project, describing themself as a “singer-songwriter with a folk punk soul.” What they’re left with are three unique projects that each draw audiences from all around the Greater Sacramento Area and beyond.
Their November 2022 solo release, the “Building Blocks EP,” has been described by Music Shelf With Mustard as “deeply personal and vulnerable … as each track builds up and escalates into situations that should make a human feel uncomfortable.”
May 2024 saw the release of another solo EP, titled “Bri Earned the Power of Self-Respect.” This release was unique from the rest of Carmel’s solo work, in that all four tracks feature collaborations with other musicians. The title track, a collaboration with chiptune-adjacent synthesist Octomammoth, was released as the lead single on March 22nd, 2024, with the whole EP being engineered by Mike Jannino @ Dream Drop Media, and released on May 24th, 2024. A week later, Carmel embarked on their first ever tour to promote the release, hitting Sacramento, Stockton, and Berkeley.
“The emotionally raw storytelling of this EP really makes it stand out. It is definitely one of those EPs that you must listen to from beginning to end to really soak it in completely. It is very self reflective and sometimes brutally honest.” –Live Free DIY Hard
Through the rest of 2024 into 2025, Carmel continued dropping the occasional single, one of the most notable being an October 2024 release titled “Never Said (A Platonic Love Song)” – recorded and engineered by Bay Area musician Lucy Broom. Live Free DIY Hard writes: “Interlaced with the final lyrics is a series of bell notes that accentuate the ending in an incredibly enduring way that rounds out the bitter sweetness of the song into something more hopeful. If you are not familiar with Brianna Carmel, this song is a great entry point to their work.”
Their May 2025 single, a demo titled “Thanks for All the Fish,” has been described by start-track.com writer Madi Briggs as “an unusual but nevertheless outstanding song … that encompasses the loneliness and rage that issues with your mental health bring about[,] and serves as a reminder that no matter what’s going on, there’s always someone there to listen…”
