In a previous life, Moore found structure in the unique contours of a ranching town in West Phoenix, where scorpions shared her home, and the streets belonged more to coyotes than vehicles or pedestrians. Her grandpa’s polka club was the center of the universe, its gravitational pull strong and comforting, a refuge where older Poles would come to sing and dance. There was even a brief time when they shared a roof with him, and nights not at the club were spent gathered around an old karaoke machine. Piano lessons proved ill-fitting, but when Moore joined the choir in her local Catholic Church, she fell in love with the larger-than-life hymns.

Despite a youth steeped in music, it wasn’t until late high school that her first band came together, inspired by the freedom she found in their theatre program, and making use of an old accordion she’d inherited from her grandparents. After school, Moore moved to Omaha, where she spent a year writing her own songs before returning to Phoenix. She remembers this time fondly, booking tours through Myspace and printing out directions from MapQuest, performing in makeshift venues around the country and sleeping on floors and couches - a DIY crash course familiar to any lifer who got their start in the late aughts. 

In 2016, she adopted the koleżanka name, which roughly translates to a colleague, or a friendly acquaintance, a tongue-in-cheek comment on the competitive and male-dominated music scene she was navigating, and a nod to the bond she felt with the other women coming up against these same obstacles. “We were a minority presence, instant colleagues'', she explains. It was around this same time that she met the members of Triathalon, a rising indie band from New York, and struck up a friendship. Before long, she’d been invited to join the band, handling keys and backing vocals on their first national headline tour, and eventually moving out east to join them full-time. One whirlwind year later, her stint with the group was over, and her life in the new city was a burning question mark. 

koleżanka’s debut album, Place Is, distills the experiences of a lifetime into sound.