When Kimaya Diggs gets inspiration for a song, she heads straight to her basement.

Guitars lean near dark blue walls covered with art portraits made by friends. A drum kit sits near a small piano while strings of lights hang across the exposed ceiling. In one corner, a mini studio room holds microphones and a sound mixer. The basement inside her western Massachusetts home gives her a berth in which to bring ideas to life without renting studio space. The setup, she says, “represents a lot of independence.”

A decade ago, Ms. Diggs may have resisted the idea of winding up in Massachusetts after college. Her family was still there. The New England surroundings she’d known since childhood – where she often felt pigeonholed as a person of color in a predominantly white neighborhood – hadn’t changed. But after spending her college years in Pennsylvania, the musician returned to the Bay State with a newfound confidence.

“I needed to learn how to fit in as the new version of myself,” says Ms.…