After two years spent wielding a backpack and guitar across the world culminating in a Thai PBS special on songwriting and indigenous rights, Kora Feder (rhymes with Peter) returned to the U.S. “very much up to the task of confronting the times we live in" (Folk Radio UK). Known for carefully crafted songs that often hold a novel’s worth of words without feeling overcrowded, Kora has earned national songwriting accolades and praise for her lyrical precision and impassioned delivery (Kerrville, Telluride, International Songwriting Competition). “Feder is the best young singer-songwriter since the young Anaïs Mitchell,” says Rich Warren of Chicago’s WFMT Folkstage and Folk Alliance International.

Her 2019 crowdfunded album In Sevens spent four months on the U.S. Folk Radio Charts. NPR described a solo performance from the record as carrying “an emotional weight that can stop you in your tracks, even long after the song is finished.” “I’d Be a Maria,” a von Trapp–inspired song from the album, has surpassed 1.5 million streams on Spotify. Kora has performed at many of the folk circuit classics from Club Passim to Folkstage Chicago to The Bluebird in Nashville. She’s played festivals like Strawberry Music Festival, Sisters Folk Festival, Philadelphia Folk Festival, and McCloud Mountain Bluegrass Festival.

In March of 2025 she released Some Kind of Truth, her third release and second full length album that takes an introspective look at the life of a young person in America in the 2020’s, including a song “about how self-quarantine has aged her” (Washington Post) that NPR described as “eloquently illustrat[ing] the full range of emotions many people are feeling in the era of the coronavirus pandemic." The record was produced by fellow songwriter Justin Farren. Cindy Howes of Basic Folk played a tune on her Folk Alley show, writing “I am flipping out about her new song Rambling Man.” Americana Highways reviewed the record, saying “a genuine early Joni Mitchell-type musical narrative…she has a sharp eye for detail & tackles subjects other songwriters seem to ignore.”

Kora grew up immersed in the Northern California folk music scene, lived in NYC for a few years, and is now a proud resident of Detroit, Michigan. She also teaches songwriting workshops in group and on-on-one formats.