A digital lover makes real music for our ears.

Name: Purple Ferdinand

Where She’s From: London, England

When She Started: 2010

Sounds Like: Classic soul

Most Similar: Lianne La Havas, Rainy Milo

Purple Ferdinand’s sweet and sultry soul has enough power and conviction to hypnotize from the first note. The 24-year-old, born Vanessa Ferdinand, represents her hometown of Stratford, east London, to the fullest and it comes across strongly in her overall swag. But don’t let the tattoos, piercings and quirky sense of style fool you into believing that all of her time is spent Tumblr-ing, and just generally doing all of the things expected of “trendy” new artists today, because that is far from the case. Her simplistic, classic soul-style delivery is real, and most of her days are now dedicated to penning more honest, heart-warming songs for her currently untitled forthcoming EP. So, there’s much more to this digital-lover than meets the eye.

For the past two years, the ukulele-playing songstress has been uploading videos of herself singing up on YouTube. One of her most popular tracks on the channel, “Beautiful Anomaly”, was lucky enough to get an amazingly-shot music video to go with it, and it took her places that she never saw coming. Unbeknownst to Ferdinand at the time of filming, the video would see her travel to NYC to play at the revered Afro-Punk Festival and be praised by The New York Times as one of the event’s standout performers. She has also received a great deal of support from BBC Radio 1 and BBC 1Xtra, and was recently given the Hot For 2013 nod by the popular British radio stations. Plus, Sony ATV just signed her to their publishing division. Not bad for a newcomer. Not bad at all.