The innovative Rimon has earned a reputation for pushing the boundaries of R&B by combining light, airy vocals with everything from space-age soundscapes to bumping club tracks. Her smooth and soulful sound has an undeniable early-aughts influence that can be traced back to growing up in the 2000s. A self-described MTV addict, she spent hours in front of the television studying the music videos of R&B greats Alicia Keys and Destiny’s Child.

But the Eritrea-born artist, who grew up as a refugee in a small village outside of Amsterdam, struggled to find others who shared her passion for music and performance. “At one point, I felt very detached from my school,” she recalls. “I felt very detached from the people I was surrounded by because I had different interests.” Feeling isolated, she started spending more time on sites like Tumblr and Twitter, where she eventually stumbled upon Amsterdam’s underground music scene. “It was just a bunch of 16-year-olds who would gather at the train station. We were a collective of skaters, musicians, and artists. We would sit there, chill, listen to loads of music, and just connect.”

At 17, the soon-to-be songstress ditched her diploma in the pursuit of becoming a full-fledged artist. Her plan? To make the kind of music she felt like making. After being introduced to rising producer Samuel Kareem, the newly acquainted duo began testing the limits of their genre-bending antics. It wasn’t long before Rimon had a body of work to share with the world. “The first [song] was very uplifting, [with] soul vibes. The second was very dark and heavy [with] trap beats,” she says. “I did that with the intention of showing my range artistically. I wanted to really show how [boundless] my sound is.”

Her latest project, an EP titled Digital Tears, marks another creative turn for the artist—it’s the first time she’s written music based on a theme rather than a feeling. Across the six tracks, Rimon explores humanity’s fraught relationship with social media and technology. “I found it challenging to write something that had nothing to do with my emotional feelings,” she says of the project. The challenge paid off; mesmerizing songs like the spoken-word-infused “Mountain Views’’ and the moody neo-soul “iClout” take Rimon’s lush vocals and danceable beats to new heights.

The year 2022 promises to be a year of growth for the 24-year-old artist. After two years off the stage, Rimon is returning for a highly anticipated European tour across Germany, Belgium, the U.K., and the Netherlands. “That’s what you [make music] for: to connect with fans, to see people, to actually feel the energy while you’re performing it, and to see what it does to people.”