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Kimaya Diggs Steps Fully Into the Producer’s Chair With ‘Green’

By Kath Galasso on September 18, 2026

Kimaya Diggs arrived in the studio for Green knowing the emotional center of every song. That certainty shaped a recording process in which she assumed her fullest role yet as lead producer, guiding a 13-track album through indie pop, soul, R&B, folk, rock, and spoken word. Its latest preview, “Plants (Still Grow)”, shows how that sense of direction can serve an intimate, reflective story.

Diggs wanted the album to carry groove while retaining a natural, living character. She chose to begin with the drummer, deciding she would travel wherever the right collaborator happened to be. That search led to Nashville and Erick Slick of Dr. Dog, who recorded basic tracks with Diggs during three days at Barnfire Creative.

Bassist Rhees Williams, a longtime friend from Diggs’ performing arts high school years, helped assemble the band. Jacob Rosazza and Ben Sanders added production, Scott Hundley mixed the record, and Diggs engineered approximately one quarter of it herself. The process placed her at the center of the album’s musical and narrative decisions.

Although Green moves among several traditions, Diggs approached its sequencing as a network of relationships rather than a collection of disconnected experiments. She describes each song as occupying a position in a three-dimensional matrix, with its distance from other tracks determined by the album’s guiding questions about goodness, change, and home.

“Plants (Still Grow)” sits close to that last question. Inspired by the greenery and waterways surrounding Diggs’ rural Western Massachusetts house, the song asks whether belonging comes from understanding the land or loving the people within it. Its picture of New England summer is romantic but never entirely uncomplicated, given Diggs’ experience as a Black and Desi artist in a predominantly white farm town.

The song’s Eli Howe-directed video was filmed mainly in Diggs’ backyard. Black walnut, jewelweed, pokeweed, wild lettuce, fireflies, and red squirrels are all part of the environment she associates with the album. The location also supports her decision to create a video for each of Green’s 13 songs.

Her growing production authority accompanies the recovery of her voice following surgery seven years ago. Diggs sees Green as the first album on which she could sing with her restored voice’s full force. That development follows a performance history stretching back to her childhood, when she sang with her sisters, played cello, and appeared at libraries and schools with the family trio Knock a Noodlehead Sister Singers.

Green will be released October 2, and Diggs will celebrate with an October 10 performance at Northampton’s Academy of Music Theatre. She then heads through the Northeast and Southeast before beginning a West Coast run in January. “Plants (Still Grow)” introduces an artist exercising careful control over her work while allowing its central questions to remain open.