Denai Moore is a singer whose love of Bon Iver, Fiest and James Blake led her to write the kind of soul searching, heart-on sleeve, poetic chamber pop that’s been know to make grown men cry. A 19-year-old from Stratford, Denai’s already flung bloggers into a frothy mouthed frenzy when her sparse and mournful track Flaws appeared online at the end of 2012. Since then, her silencing, stripped back stage show has had the likes of Plan B and Tom Odell hail her as one of the most exciting new songwriters, while Clare Maguire became so enamoured by Denai’s music that she adopted her as a protégé.

Denai’s compulsion to write started at an early age. Surrounded by her father’s instruments throughout her childhood, the Jamaican born, London bred singer started to secretly experiment with music aged 7, dabbling with the keyboard, piano, harmonica and melodica. But it wasn’t until she picked up a guitar that she really started her compositional journey. Her earliest songs were so strange and troubled that nobody could believe someone was so young was capable of making sounds so profound, “Coming from a 12 year old it seemed a bit weird. The songs were really deep so they thought my dad was writing for me, but the ideas had just come from things I'd see around me, films and people,” says Denai.

Thanks to an intense obsession with Lauryn Hill, Denai learnt about crafting songs infused with honesty and pure emotion, watching Hill’s Unplugged MTV session on repeat during her teens. Her fascination with creating music was so impulsive back then that during school she would often write songs in her head and have to make up excuses to leave lessons so that she could run to the music room and work out the melody out on a piano. These sudden flashes of inspiration would even happen during exams, and when her time was up she'd have nothing to show the examiner other than a piece of paper covered in lyrics.