Armed with degrees in psychology and jazz performance from The New School University in New York, Thana Alexa stood out even before she last year became the first Croatian artist in any musical genre to ever earn a Grammy Award nomination.
The fact that her nomination came for "ONA," an album which was inspired by Croatian women in general — and her mother and now 100-year-old grandmother specifically — makes the internationally acclaimed singer's Grammy tale even more notable.
So does the fact that her Grammy-nominated album features her singing in both English and Croatian. Released in 2020, "ONA" draws from the musical traditions Alexa learned in Zagreb and New York, where she was born. She spent nearly every summer since she was an infant in Dubrovnik, then moved to Zagreb with her family when she was 13.
