Jeremy Loops

Juxtaposing booming city rhythms with lilting folk, Jeremy Loops perfectly captures the duality of his South African life. The extremes aren't new to the singer, who by day travels to the furthest corners of Africa to battle deforestation through his organization, Greenpop, and by night resumes as raconteur for raucous fans around the world. In a whirlwind 2014, Loops debuted at #1 on iTunes in South Africa, headlined major festivals, and maintained #1 on the three most prominent radio stations in Southern Africa with "Down South", his breakout single.

You wouldn't know on sight that the always affable, charming Loops' social message is as important as the message he writes in his songs. A sense of oneness with all that is around you is a fiber woven into everything he touches. On Trading Change, his debut, his wandering spirit is in constant flux with a pulsing desire to be grounded in love. On "Mission to the Sun", an impassioned plea for a lover to stay afloat, Loops implores "Wherever you go and however you roam, just keep your head up high and keep howling at the moon".

To say Jeremy merely roams is a disservice to his boundless activism - through his environmental work at Greenpop, he traverses Southern Africa teaching underprivileged schoolchildren how to protect their planet. This connection with the planet and its inhabitants is just one element of the broken tale Loops tells on Trading Change. Fraught with lost love and moving on, Trading Change is a fervent letter on embracing those intimate wounds and taking flight. "It's a broken heart,", Loops reminds us on the raw, confrontational "Higher Stakes", "…and this time I'll fix myself before you".