It's just over a month until the inaugural Future City Festival takes place in Hamilton.
Alternative music sanctuary Nivara Lounge on Victoria Street and Creative Waikato's art space on Alexandra Street will both be alive over March 3 and 4 with artists from diverse origins.
One of the many thought-provoking musical artists attending the event, organised by Hamilton Underground Press, will be Alexa Dexa, coming from New York, travelling relatively light with a toy piano and a hiking backpack containing seven pitched desk bells, a few cables and her laptop.
"I actually have a really large number of toy instruments that I hoard in my studio space and in my house," she said.
"When I go on tour there's just no way I'm able to bring as many toy instruments as I have around with me to make music, so what I do is I take my tiniest toy piano, which is 18 keys. It's a Schoenhut toy piano, and I carry it in my arms, which always makes for interesting conversation with people on the street."
Alexa told Hamilton News that she has toured through about 40 states in the USA so far, and has also taken her art to a large number of countries in Europe - all carrying her toychestra with her.
On this tour, she will spend a month in New Zealand - where she is looking forward to taking the chance to explore - before heading to Australia, Japan and South Korea.
She is looking forward to sharing her live performance with the audience in her set at the Future City Festival.
"The beginning process of creating music for me is working digitally, taking sample libraries that I have and working through different beats and sequences, and then after that I'm bringing in the vocals and the toy instruments," she said.
"I think this way works out really well for me because I do love playing live instruments while I'm singing. I like having something to be doing with my hands - and I also think that digital component is so important for the types of sounds that I'm going for, so it's definitely a happy medium that's worked out really well for me so far."
Alexa decided upon this approach serendipitously, as while she was trained on a real piano growing up, she found its bulkiness conjured a distance between her and live audiences.
"Then I found a video of a woman playing a toy piano and a sand block.
"I was maybe 20, I didn't know toy pianos existed, and I just fell in love instantly," she said.
"I think with a lot of the toy instruments I have and that I play, it was something that I stumbled upon and then just really fell in love with that sound and that aesthetic."
Alexa Dexa will bring one of many unique performances to the inaugural Future City Festival.
"I think that my performances are very intimate, so even though there are these beats that are happening, everything has still got this more chilled out feeling.
"I sit on the floor cross-legged when I play, so I find a lot of the time people are inspired to sit around me.
"It's almost like if you were telling a ghost story to your friends in a camp fire setting - it's you and your friends being spooky but also in kind of an innocent way - I think that's definitely a good taste of what's to come."
Info and tickets for Future City Festival are available at undertheradar.co.nz. Listen to Alexa Dexa's recorded music at alexadexa.bandcamp.com