Born in Sydney, Australia, Nikita is an identical twin whose parents were in an ‘80s band called Hotel Berlin. When Nikita opted out of going to college, instead of shaming her for her choices, her parents said she could stay at home rent free as long as she kept writing songs. 

After being taught a few chords on the guitar by her father at age 15, Nikita began putting melodies behind some of her song lyrics. She and her twin, Desiree, started a YouTube channel where they’d perform her songs that she lovingly refers to as “garbage.”

While working in Sydney unboxing shipments, packing shelves – and writing song lyrics on the back of inventory sheets, her dream of moving to Nashville started to overtake her thoughts. She and her sister booked a trip to come to the states for a month. They attended CMA Fest in Nashville and had the time of their lives. 

But then their month of touring the states and discovering Nashville would come to an end and back to Australia they went.

It would be another year or two before Nikita finally got the nerve to book herself a flight to Nashville, for real this time, not just for vacation. She stayed in an Airbnb in East Nashville and searched forums for “what to do in Nashville to make it.” The advice she got was to go out and play every night.

“I played every open mic night and literally anywhere that would let me play,” she remembers. What did she learn during this phase of her Nashville exploration? Nothing musically, she says, but everything about life. 

“My twin sister and I were always together, but while I was here for that month, I had to learn to walk up to meet people all by myself. It was a great trip and then after that month, I had to go back home, still not famous.”

But during her time in the states, she would end up getting pulled into a pack of female singer-songwriters who were auditioning for a touring gig. She didn’t know who it was for, but she was at a stage in her career where she would be up for anything. 

“It probably helped that at the time I didn’t know who Bobby Bones was,” she remembers. “I would have been way more nervous.”So after heading back home to Australia, she was able to get a Skype audition with Bobby Bones. The next day the nationally syndicated radio host said she should move to Nashville. 

“I asked my boss if I could have another month off and she said yes. This was on Saturday and I flew out on Monday.”

Her next month in Nashville involved something she had never done before: co-writes. Then she began touring with Bones and his band the Raging Idiots. “One night on stage he pulled me out and said, ‘let’s just see what she does.’ I started playing Jolene, and quickly realized this was going to be the best college for me. I had no concept of what I was getting when I auditioned for Bobby Bones.”

After the tour with Bobby, she would move to Nashville permanently, thanks to a publishing deal with Black River Entertainment which allowed her to get an extended work visa. Now she was officially a songwriter for a living, which was a dream since the age of 15. 

“I couldn’t wait to fill out a form and put ‘songwriter’ down as my occupation,” she remembers. 

Now, several years and several hundred songs later, Nikita is recording her own music for her own album, not focusing solely on one of her songs landing on someone else’s.

She is writing and recording with her friend and fellow singer-songwriter, Walker Hayes. 

“While I am still trying to find my way as an artist, the songs have always been about the stories,” she said. “All my songs are about friends and relationships. With my new music, I got stuck for a while worrying about what people wanted to hear, but now I know I want it to be authentic me, so people can get to know me. It’s autobiographical. These are songs I wrote by myself in my bedroom having no money.”

The record is set for release in August and will be chock full of songs about her childhood and her life so far.

“There’s one song I wrote by myself called Own Roses. I cried while writing it. It’s about moving here and being lonely and miserable at first, but I planted my own roses and ‘got the garden I deserve’.”

Ultimately, although Nikita says she wouldn’t turn her nose up at playing stadiums and winning Grammys, she feels her sweet spot is the stripped-back sound, because playing songs that way feel more like they did when she wrote them.

“I would love to be in a position where I can keep releasing music and have people care that I am releasing music. I’m also excited at some point to be able to pay my parents back.”