Devendra Obi Banhart (born May 30, 1981) is a Venezuelan-American singer-songwriter and visual artist. Banhart was born in Houston, Texas and raised by his mother in Venezuela. As a teenager, he moved to California, and in 1998 began studying at the San Francisco Art Institute, dropping out in 2000 to pursue a musical career. In 2002, Banhart released his debut album The Charles C. Leary and continued to create music from then on, working with record labels Young God Records and XL Recordings. Banhart's music is often referred to as psychedelic folk, freak folk and New Weird America, and is associated with acts such as singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom, musical group CocoRosie, and contemporary folk band Vetiver. The New York Times has called his work "free associative work" and SPIN magazine has described it as "ashram-appropriate guitar strums" and "trippy-hippie tone poetry." Critics have compared Banhart's style to that of 1970s band Tyrannosaurus Rex, an early version of British rock musician Marc Bolan's T. Rex, though in a 2004 interview Banhart stated that he was unaware of Tyrannosaurus Rex until after he began writing and recording music. Banhart has cited Vashti Bunyan, Kurt Cobain, Simón Díaz, Mick Jagger, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Axl Rose, Arthur Russell, Ali Farka Touré, and Caetano Veloso as his main influences.