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Zee Avi (aka KokoKaina)

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AboutZee Avi
Real Name: Izyan Alirahman
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Zee Avi (born Izyan Alirahman, also known as KokoKaina b. 1986) is a Malaysian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and ukulele player. She was born in Miri, Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. She moved to Kuala Lumpur when she was 12. She studied fashion design at American Inter-Continental University in London.

Zee originally posted a video of her first song on YouTube because one of her friends had missed her first performance in Kuala Lumpur, so she created a video on YouTube for him to watch. He convinced Zee to leave the video up, and soon she received positive feedback, which inspired her to put more videos on YouTube. After she was featured on YouTube, she was discovered by Patrick Keeler of The Raconteurs, who passed the link to Ian Montone, manager of the White Stripes, Shins, Raconteurs and more. He passed her music on to Emmett Malloy and she was signed by Brushfire Records, which is partly owned by Jack Johnson. Her song "No Christmas For Me" is featured on Brushfire Records's 2008 Christmas album This Warm December: A Brushfire Holiday. Her single "Bitter Heart" was first to become available on the US iTunes store, and her full self-titled debut album was released on May 19, 2009. On the day of her album's release, YouTube featured her on the front page in Spotlight: Music Tuesday. She is currently (June - August 2009) touring the United States with Pete Yorn. The final concert on her first U.S. tour was at the Music Box at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood, California on August 27, 2009.

Zee Avi (aka KokoKaina) is just 23 but she's an old soul. A huge talent in a petite frame bringing a universal message from the unlikely birthplace of Borneo, an ancient island east of Malaysia which remains an untouched, natural paradise, an apt description of her songs. How Avi came to record her debut album in L.A., the first joint release from Ian Montone's Monotone Label and Jack Johnson's Brushfire Records, is a true 21st century tale of the way the Internet has transformed the music business and shrunk the globe in the process. Born in the tiny town of Miri in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, Zee grew up near the South China Sea in a liberal, encouraging household where her father owned an energy consultancy. "I was bred to be a lawyer," she says, but music was in her blood. Her father's father sang and played double-bass, accordion, violin and guitar in bands. At age 12, Zee moved from Borneo to Kuala Lumpur where she has been based since. At 17, Zee started locking herself in a room for hours on end to learn to play guitar. Guitar took a back seat for 4 years while she was studying fashion design in London. When she returned to Kuala Lumpur, she picked the instrument back up and began writing songs and performing with a band. Zee began recording her songs on a webcam and posting them on YouTube for a friend to hear. "I remember getting so excited when there was one new comment from some random person I didn't know... One was written by Kris Rowley, a U.K. singer-songwriter with a YouTube following under the name Zzzzzzzzap. He began posting her videos on his site, which began a viral snowball effect. The day before her 22nd birthday, Zee posted what she intended to be "my last video," a holiday song, "No Christmas for Me." By the time she checked her e-mail Avi had almost 3,000 messages including a slew of label offers. One email came from Ian Montone, who had been shown the YouTube clip by Raconteurs' drummer, Patrick Keeler, prompting Montone to get in touch and offer to release her music on the Monotone Label. Before she knew it Zee was on a plane to L.A. to record her debut with producer Robert Carranza at Brushfire's Solar Powered Plastic Plant. "No Christmas for Me" was then featured on the holiday charity album, This Warm December, A Brushfire Holiday, Vol. 1. With an eclectic pool of influences that range from such eccentrics as Cat Power, Regina Spektor, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Jolie Holland, Daniel Johnston and Chris Garneau, to jazz greats Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, to classics like Velvet Underground and Led Zeppelin, this self-described "rock lover at heart" captures the dark, bittersweet qualities of romance with a crack left open for hope and optimism. From Malaysia to Los Angeles, Zee Avi is enjoying the ride and ready to take on passengers. "I'm still pinching myself" she gushes. "My parents always told me it's important to keep yourself grounded. I'm thankful, but at the same time, I just want to jump through the roof. It's been a pretty amazing journey, getting to work with some really wonderful people, a blessing, really." Zee Avi's Monotone/Brushfire Records debut returns that blessing...and then some.

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