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Rita Mae is an exciting talent emerging on the Auckland music scene, her music charged with real emotion and intricate hooks.

Twenty four year-old Rita grew up in Muriwai on Auckland’s wild West Coast. Her parents, especially her late father, Jim Laing (a member of Flying Nun stalwarts JPS Experience) encouraged Rita and her two sisters to write and perform songs from a young age and music surrounded the Laing girls in the tight knit community.

Rita developed her own writing style, allying a unique feel for melody to her emotional lyricism. She littered songs across Soundcloud and played too many open mic nights to remember through her late teens.

After a stint in Dunedin collecting a degree in neuroscience, she returned to Auckland to immerse herself in learning music production, searching for her sound in the all- encompassing genre of contemporary indie pop.