ALEXIS & THE SAMURAI

It’s fitting you might have caught a glimpse of Alexis & the Samurai’s members Alexis Marceaux and Sam Craft on Treme, HBO’s pantheon to New Orleans musicians. The soulful, young artists are lifelong New Orleanians, with credentials that best that of the cast.  The pair’s star has since risen even more furiously with Marceaux’s recent announcement of being a contestant on this fall’s season of NBC’s The Voice.

Exiled after having lost everything in hurricane Katrina, Alexis has spent the last several years returning home and building up a career from scratch. The meantime has been hard-fought but fruitful, with appearances at The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Voodoo Music Experience, SXSW, and several tours of the US and Europe.  The two 20-somethings initially teamed up for Alexis’ sophomore effort Orange Moon (2011). Under the tutelage and engineering of The Polyphonic Spree’s Rick Nelson, the duo drew an all-star cast, 25 of NOLA’s finest musicians of every genre, for a big and lush indie-pop opus with a distinct Louisiana flavor. Marceaux released Dandelion in ’09, and its songs were picked up by various television shows (MTV’s The Real World, E!’s Keeping Up With the Kardashians, etc.), but with Orange Moon, she’s elevated herself into a “songwriting force to be reckoned with” (No Depression), securing more media placements, as well as rotation in Starbucks cafés and other stores.

Alexis & the Samurai’s ubiquity is due to skyrocket through Alexis’ performances on The Voice, a primetime phenomenon with weekly viewership in the millions.  The duo plans to capitalize on the exposure by taking their multi-instrumental spectacle (strings, guitars, keys, foot percussion, vocal harmonies, often all at once) on the road, as well as by working on a new EP, set for release this winter.