Biography
Ramona Gonzalez began as Nite Jewel in 2008 as the result of her juggling music with undergraduate studies. She cites artists such as Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey as her musical inspirations. With assistance from her then-husband, Cole M.G.N., she created songs on a portable eight-track cassette recorder. She stated that "moments of ecstasy, emotion, and hardship" were her inspiration for those recordings. in 2009 she released the album Good Evening.
Soon after starting her MySpace music page, her song, "Suburbia" was selected to be in Noah Baumbach's film Greenberg. Within a year she was touring European festivals. Her music drew comparison to Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Cocteau Twins and contemporary R&B such as Aaaliyah and Timbaland. She was often associated with the chillwave genre; Gonzalez initially "despised" the label, viewing it as a media creation to group unrelated artists, though she later became comfortable with the association. While she later reflected that her early work "helped define the genre," she also expressed frustration regarding the erasure of female artists and women of color from the historical narrative of the movement. At the time, she preferred the definition "liquid cool," while citing English electronic music duo Autechre as a major musical influence.
Ramona Gonzalez has a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Occidental College. She is also a multimedia artist and has exhibited a number of video and sound installation pieces in the L.A area, one of which was entitled The Question Concerning Technology
December 6, 2011, Nite Jewel released her single, "She's Always Watching You". On March 6, 2012, Ramona released her second album One Second of Love, on Secretly Canadian. The company reissued the first album, Good Evening, on vinyl in 2012.
Since releasing her debut album for Secretly Canadian, Nite Jewel has toured both North America and Europe. She performed Kraftwerk's Computer World in Los Angeles' Krautrock Classics on June 1, 2012. Later that summer, she traveled to New York City to perform in the same event at Le Poisson Rouge.
On April 29, 2012, Nite Jewel performed at the Brandeis University Springfest.
In 2013, her song "Nowhere To Go" was featured in Grand Theft Auto V's in-game radio station, Radio Mirror Park.
Gonzalez left Secretly Canadian and recorded her third album, Liquid Cool, which was released in June 2016 on her own label, Gloriette. She cited OMD's "The Romance of the Telescope" (1983) as a prominent influence during the recording process.
On August 27, 2021, her fifth studio album No Sun was released via Gloriette.
