Mia Borders was born and raised in New Orleans, and music was in the house early — she got her first acoustic guitar at ten, her first electric came as a gift from her grandmother, and one of her grandfathers was a trumpet player. After attending the Taft School in Connecticut and planning for film school in Georgia, Hurricane Katrina changed everything: in January 2006 she came home to New Orleans. She started working as a professional musician later that year, enrolled at Loyola University, and graduated with an English degree in 2010. A brief stint as a paralegal ended with a decision: skip graduate school, play music for a living.
Her 2009 debut LP Southern Fried Soul announced a fully formed artist, and she has released steadily ever since, all on her own Blaxican Records: Magnolia Blue (2010), Wherever There Is (2012), Quarter-Life Crisis (2013), Fever Dreams (2016), the Good Side of Bad EP (2019), and Firewalker (2024). Her sound is Crescent City to the core — funk-driven rhythms tinged with blues and contemporary electronic textures — and her touchstones run from Bill Withers to Etta James. USA Today called her “deeply funky”; the Times-Picayune called her “confident and cool.”
