Diana Silvers

Diana Silvers has music in her bones. That’s evident from the first note she sings or strums — from her subtly lush songs that channel the flowing folk of Laurel Canyon and the observational prowess of Phoebe Bridgers— and it will be clear to the sure-to-be instant fans who catch her first live performance as a 2025 Pop-Up Artist at the legendary Newport Folk Festival later this month. The fact that Diana has managed to keep her gift a secret so far is as remarkable as her utterly organic music. She’s been hiding in plain sight, a buzzing actress and model whose musician friends were as stunned as anyone to learn she had been quietly writing songs on guitar and piano as a private practice. When she was pressed to share, an entire album sprang forth, recorded earlier this year at the storied Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village. As it turns out, it had been there all along.

If you spend any time reading interviews with the Los Angeles-born, New York-based artist, you will notice that nearly all of them bend toward music at some point. During the pandemic’s early days she told Vanity Fair, “I spend half my day in quarantine plonking away at some instrument, making noise just because I like it.” A FLAUNT profile noted that “Silvers’ references are eclectic and inter-generational … Jimi Hendrix and Joni Mitchell share airtime with Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey.” Her friend, the alt-pop auteur Dominic Fike, once told GQ that she’s “a fucking musical encyclopedia” who helped expand his sonic palette. Pitchfork asked her to share her personal playlist and, clearly impressed, wrote, “Music comes naturally to Diana Silvers.”

But all that was before anyone had heard her original music — and little other than a few short but striking Instagram covers, including one where she does “Hey Jude” on the glockenspiel. A self-described “nomad” with a burning curiosity, who often carries a proper film-loaded camera with her, Diana has made fast friends with artists over the years. Electric Lady is a regular haunt for her cohort, and when she decided to finally pick a guitar off the wall and play a tune for them, studio boss Lee Foster was so blown away that he immediately booked her session time and insisted she record there. Before long — before she found her way to Capitol Records — she wrote and co-produced a complete body of work, grounded by an enchanting voice, searching lyrics, and the undeniable ease of her compositions.

Throughout her life, Diana’s demonstrated incredible drive, a serious hunger for knowledge, and a seemingly preternatural ability to excel at whatever she dives into. Music has been part of that all the while. One of six children in a house where, as she told WWD, “everyone plays an instrument,” she spent 10 years studying cello, while at the same time growing her popular music education by helping her less technologically inclined dad make mix CDs. She was a competitive tennis player for some time, attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and her résumé since is far beyond impressive, stretching across film, TV, runways, cover shoots, and campaigns including Celine, Prada, Polo, and more. But when Diana was away from the spotlight, she returned to the form of expression that felt truest. She taught herself guitar, began writing, and — now — is singing that truth to the world.