Editor’s pick: Hiatus Kaiyote makes Outside Lands debut

Saalfield seemed giddy to talk about her band taking the stage alongside luminaries like Duran Duran and LCD Soundsystem at Outside Lands.

What’s more, her friend — the one she was staying with in N.Y.C. during her short break from touring — is muralist Lauren YS, a.k.a. Lolo, who will be a featured live artist at the festival.

Inspired by global music, everywhere from Ethiopia to Indonesia, Saalfield digs deep when it comes to crooning tunes like Hiatus Kaiyote’s hit “Nakamarra” or creating such complex lyrics for songs like “Chivalry Is Not Dead” (inspired by the sex scene in “Purple Rain”).

The former, off its full-length debut album “Tawk Tomahawk,” earned Hiatus Kaiyote’s first Grammy nomination for best R&B performance in 2013.

The band followed that up with another Grammy nod earlier this year with “Breathing Underwater” — a tribute to Stevie Wonder, Saalfield says — but again didn’t bring home the golden gramophone, losing to the Weeknd’s “Earned It (Fifty Shades of Gray).”

To the untrained ear, he sounds like he’s just doing a R&B track, but he does a lot of sick stuff.

With two full albums and two EPs (most recently “Recalibrations, Vol. 1,” a four-track release featuring new versions and remixes of the band’s songs, including an acoustic version of “Nakamarra”) since 2012, the band — led by the ever-eccentric Saalfield on vocals and guitar — has attracted quite a fan base, which included Prince.

Sadly, Saalfield says, the band never got their schedules to align to make it happen before Prince’s untimely death in April.

[...] every time the band performs “Borderline With My Atoms,” it’s like a private tribute.

Saalfield, an orphan with a Gypsy soul who admits she hates restrictions of planning or feeling stagnant, says Bay Area fans will just have to come and see.