“Plants (Still Grow)” Opens a Door Into Kimaya Diggs’ Green
A New England summer provides the setting for “Plants (Still Grow)”, the recent Kimaya Diggs single that offers a useful entry into her new album, Green. The song brings intimacy and memory into contact with the natural world, locating the record’s questions about belonging in a season and a landscape with personal meaning.
The accompanying video, directed by Eli Howe, was filmed largely in Diggs’ backyard. That location is central to the album’s origins. Diggs associates its title with the view from her home in summer, where woods open onto farmland and native plants support birds and insects.
Her relationship with that space involves years of work. Removing invasive growth and tending native plants gives the album’s imagery a practical foundation. The garden is a place shaped by attention, and its relevance to Green extends beyond the appearance of the season.
Released October 2, the album considers growth on a different timescale as well. Diggs connects the sudden arrival of spring leaves with personal change that can take a long time to develop before becoming apparent. That relationship helps explain how an album formed after prolonged loss and difficulty can take its name from a moment of rapid transformation.
The record also questions whether a loved landscape is enough to make a place feel like home. Diggs grew up in South Hadley and has spent much of her life in Western Massachusetts, deeply connected to the region’s natural environment and creative community. As a Black and Desi artist in a predominantly white area, she has also experienced social isolation there.
“A Sense of Place,” featuring Lizzie No, approaches that contradiction through spoken word. Its direct examination of displacement offers a different perspective from the intimacy and seasonal memory of “Plants (Still Grow).” The two songs give the album room to consider affection for a place alongside the difficulty of living within it.
The wider project moves through indie pop, soul, R&B, folk and rock, with Diggs leading production and recording its foundational tracks in Nashville. Her hometown release show takes place October 10 at Northampton’s Academy of Music Theatre with Alisa Amador. For listeners arriving through “Plants (Still Grow),” Green expands the single’s setting into a larger inquiry about the people, places and practices that sustain a life.
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