Mali Obomsawin and Magdalena Abrego sound almost relieved to be playing in their new band, Deerlady. Though neither is a total stranger to the world of indie rock, they’ve both found success in recent years in other musical milieus. Obomsawin, a Berklee-trained bassist and composer, tours the jazz festival circuit as the leader of the Mali Obomsawin Sextet. In 2022, she released an acclaimed free jazz album called Sweet Tooth, which she sang entirely in the Abenaki language. Abrego also has a jazz background that runs through Berklee; she studied guitar performance there before moving on to the New England Conservatory of Music, where she’d eventually become a faculty member. On Greatest Hits, Deerlady’s winkingly titled debut album, those biographies dissolve, and Obomsawin and Abrego tap into something more instinctive.
