The day Alisa Amador decided to walk away from her career in music was, ironically enough, the day her career truly began.

"I was burned out and dealing with all this personal grief and trauma, and I finally just came to the conclusion that I couldn't go on the way I was anymore," she reflects. "And then as I was walking through the logistics of how I would break the news to everyone in my life, I got a phone call telling me that I'd won the NPR Tiny Desk Contest."

Now, two years later, Amador is an artist reborn, both spiritually and sonically, with a stunning full-length debut to show for it. Recorded with co-producers Tyler Chester and Daniel Radin, Multitudes finds the bilingual singer/songwriter formally introducing herself with a bold, captivating self-portrait, one that serves not only as a testament to how far she's come, but also as a celebration of where she comes from. Slipping effortlessly between Spanish and English and featuring guest appearances from Gaby Moreno, Madison Cunningham, and Quinn Christopherson, the songs here are raw and vulnerable, at once steeped in devastating loss and uncertainty, but also laced with the hope and resilience of young woman learning to find her voice and stand her ground in the midst of a personal and professional maelstrom. Certainly, Multitudes is a beautiful record — the way Amador's crystalline voice cut through the album's lush synthesizers, dreamy guitars, and cinematic string arrangements is nothing short of spellbinding — but more than that, it's a fierce work of discovery and affirmation that reveals new secrets with each repeated listen, a profound, revelatory meditation on triumph and loss, endings and beginnings, identity and belonging, all delivered by a songwriter convinced she would never write again.

And now, as Amador stands at the threshold of her most compelling chapter yet, it's the reason she's finally found where she belongs.

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Photo courtesy of the artist.