Cleo Reed builds work, lineage, and protest into expansive songcraft
Cleo Reed is a New York and DC-rooted multidisciplinary artist working across music, composition, instrument-making, performance, and fabric arts. The supplied sources place their practice in Black underground sound and connect it to family history, labor, and the body. Reed’s 2025 double LP CUNTRY is presented as a folk-electronic project that responds to exploitation in the workplace and the wider American order. The release also frames the record as a mix of work-song tradition and electronic-forward ideas, with songs that include protest and after-work scenes.
Drop the needle
01
02
Always The Horse, Never The Jockey
From the 2025 album CUNTRY; credited to Cleo Reed & IWEWE.