“It was really organic,” said Lisa-Kaindé, the keyboardist and principal songwriter, during a three-way Zoom chat. “Our first song was written when we were about 14 years old, and I think it was the same month we discovered Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald and Amy Winehouse. In one month, we discovered so much American music and British music. Singers that were icons.”
“We realized we didn’t have a clue what they were saying,” she continued. “Our first song, because we were so touched by all of that music, came out in babyish, broken English.”
The siblings, whose U.S. tour stops at 9:30 Club on Sunday, were quick to note that they also sing in Spanish and Yoruba, the African language that’s the source of the band’s name. (It means “twins.”)
“We found our sound in English and Spanish,” Lisa-Kaindé said. “Our songs in French aren’t quite there yet, but we’re going there.”
Naomi, the duo’s co-producer and beat maker, still lives in Paris. Lisa-Kaindé relocated to London, near the studio where the duo records, most recently 2022’s “Spell 31,” with co-producer Richard Russell. He functions as a catalyst for Ibeyi’s eclectic songs, which layer the sisters’ lovely multi-tracked vocals over mostly electronic backing tracks.
“He allows us to be creative,” said Naomi. “The majority of it is us. Testing things, trying things. He was there to say, ‘Go harder. Go further. Keep going. Try something else.’”
Among Russell’s tactics is bringing texts, whether song lyrics or books, to the studio. A crucial Russell contribution to Ibeyi’s latest album was a copy of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, a set of magic spells meant to help guide a soul through the underworld.
“We were working on ‘Made of Gold,’” Lisa-Kaindé recalled. “It was supposed to be a love song. But we knew something was missing.”
“I opened the book, and I fell on Spell 31,” part of whose text she recites at the end of the finished song. “I knew it was a magical moment. And I said, the album is called ‘Spell 31.’ ‘Made of Gold’ is not a love song. ‘Made of Gold’ is about the ancestors. And we connected to that power. That power that we all have.”
“We wrote ‘Spell 31’ on the blackboard,” Lisa-Kaindé said. “And I felt that it protected the whole experience of making this album.”
Russell also introduced the sisters to the lyrics of “Rise Above,” a 1981 song by LA hardcore-punk band Black Flag, then fronted by D.C.’s Henry Rollins. Ibeyi gave the words a choral arrangement and added a martial beat and a rap (by Trinidadian British performer Berwyn) about George Floyd. But the twosome, wary of being influenced, didn’t want to listen to the original.
Asked if they ever did, the women laughed. “We haven’t,” Naomi replied.
“We have heard other songs by Black Flag, and also read this book [about the band’s arduous touring regime] that was fascinating,” Lisa-Kaindé added. “So we know a great deal about them.”
The group’s sound has gotten more lush over its nine-year run, and the sisters are now backed onstage by two other musicians, drummer Ismael Nobour and keyboardist-bassist Nicholas Vella. “We can just sing and be in front of you, and connect more,” said Naomi of the new lineup. “The sound is bigger, and it changes the show completely.”
The twins’ father, whose voice is sampled on the album-closing “Los Muertos,” died when they were 11. Naomi then learned to play his trademark instrument, the boxlike cajón. Yet Ibeyi relies heavily on synth beats.
Lisa-Kaindé doesn’t think her dad would mind. If he could hear Ibeyi, she mused, “I think he would be happy. He would be dancing.”
March 26 at 7 p.m. (doors open) at 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW. 930.com. $30.