Rina Coltran

Less isn’t always more. In 2014, the Dutch-Zimbabwean artist Rina Mushonga released The Wild, the Wilderness, a pleasant but mild debut record that didn’t look much further than the coffeehouse for inspiration. But a recent move from Amsterdam to Peckham, a culturally diverse community in London’s South End, has unlatched something grand in Mushonga. Her sophomore album, In a Galaxy, is expansive, integrating sounds gathered from her native country and her newfound home in the UK. Thinking big suits Mushonga, and over the course of this 12-track LP, she dramatizes the banal trappings of daily life with her fortifying melodies, making a case for maximalist, ecstatic pop as a balm for it all.