Kota Banks celebrates her Italian heritage with new single, Fiorentina

Header photo by Tiff Williams.

Since joining the NLV Records ensemble with last year's bubbly break-out Holiday (which I'm still singing along to some seven months later), Kota Banks has been teasing some of the most inventive and skilful pop music in Australia. With Swick on production duties, singles like Holiday and March's upbeat follow-up Zoom are perfect examples of Kota Banks' seamless left-field dance-pop, which cuts through the rest and stands out from the pack with her confident, flavourful vocals and those bouncy, stabbing productions. Fiorentina, her newest single, works much in the same way, uniting a saccharine production full of punchy synth, expansive breaks and roaring crowd samples with Banks' playful vocals that feel as effortlessly cool and relaxed as ever as they glide over Swick's driving production.

It's a celebration of her Italian heritage and everything it encompasses, from the soccer chants which roar in the background and the FIFA name-drops to the sun-soaked, pool-side feel of the single, ideally accompanied by a dripping scoop of gelato or a glass of prosecco. “Fiorentina is just me flexing and repping my Italian heritage,” says Kota Banks on the single, which arrives through NLV Records ahead of a stream of more releases to come from the singer-songwriter in the rest of the year. "I’d been working with Swick for months on the mixtape, and knowing he loves to play FIFA, I’d been telling him I was going to make a song about it. It actually started as almost a joke for me, but as we worked on it, I realised how much I resonated with it culturally, and how much I needed a song on the project that evoked Italian flavour. This song is probably my favourite on the tape. My nonna gets down to it when she cooks."

To further solidify and celebrate that Italian influence, the single comes with an alternate version sung entirely in Italian, with Capo Lee's short verse in the original sitting back to let Kota Banks' sensual vocals dance in the limelight. It also further cements Kota Banks' drive to stand-out from the crowd, with the silky Italian vocals illustrating her urge to push Australian pop boundaries and keep everyone on their toes.

After being hailed as a pop-star in the making by basically everyone in Australia, Kota Banks is quickly becoming one of Australia's best. Catch her (and esteemed international producer Chrome Sparks in DJ mode) supporting What So Not on his upcoming album tour this month, full dates and deets HERE.

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