Cleo Reed
Music Residency

A student of Black underground sound and intention, Cleo Reed is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice encompasses participatory art, music composition, instrument-making, bandleading, installation, and fabric arts. Raised in New York City and Washington, DC, Reed’s history with music starts with classical training in percussion at Harlem School of the Arts, to playing guitar and songwriting in the influential New York punk band Pretty Sick, to studying sound engineering and sound design at Berklee College of Music. Since releasing their debut album Root Cause in 2023—including a limited physical release with Vinyl Me, Please—Reed has emerged as a bold, rising talent, forging forward while staying firmly rooted in their ancestral and cultural lineage.

Reed’s sophomore double LP CUNTRY (2025) is a sprawling folk-electronic offering that grapples with labor-induced rage—both on the body and in the American workplace. Side A pulls influence from the canon of American work songs—blues, soul, folk, and country. Side B is sonically dystopian and electronic-forward, with a more rap-centric approach. The dueling sides symbolize the opposing forces of Reed’s New York City upbringing versus her family’s southern roots—and honors those that came before while subverting the status quo.