Equal bits ubiquitous and enigmatic, punny girl Elle Vettica has you asking, “Is she or isn’t she?” Raised in the woods of Novar, ON by two audiophiles, Elle Vettica is an artist searching for ways to connect her own colourful version of the real world to everyone else’s. Filled with sensory delights and overloads, her fascination with technology and its impact on us, and the rhythms and patterns found in the natural world inform her every piece of reality.
Elle Vettica’s music is largely rooted in improv. Tangible and imperfect, she creates by impulse, instinct and desire. Much of her earlier work exists as pure demos, first takes and rough recordings that hold a special moment of magic. She describes the music she makes as, “As is, with little to no rehearsal, just pure output from the creative state.” Funny, introspective, raw, her songs are sweat infused disco dance-offs, dosed with romantic power-pop crescendos, brooding synths, funky basslines and a lot of chuckles.
Elle Vettica grew up playing piano in her grandmother’s parlor, where her aunt gave lessons in Debussy. At age 12, her father, a professional touring guitarist and gear nerd, built her first electric guitar. By 13, she was on stage at family weddings and backyard festivals with her folk-singer mother. After a bad breakup in Copenhagen in 2017, Elle Vettica began to emerge, pouring her feelings into her first original work, Your Parents Would Be So Proud. Released under the moniker Busty Rhymes, this is proto-Elle: silly, amped up, girly, emotional, raunchy, rude.
Through mediums of music and performance, painting and sculpture, Elle Vettica has worked professionally in music, set design and video production for 20 years. From Mount Royal to Mulholland Drive, Queen St. West to Christiania, Elle Vettica is a true product of artistic environments and experience, at once a music business industry insider and outlier. An admirer of Kim Gordon, ESG, PJ Harvey, Peaches and Yoko Ono, these artists inspire her lo-fi, fun-hearted, DIY approach to songwriting.
Her current solo work involves creating vocal tapestries, beats and backing tracks with a single looper pedal.
Because no outsider can truly thrive alone, she has also formed experimental-punk projects including duo Pottery Mouth with multi-disciplinary artist Jenn Goodwin and Redd Meat with fellow artists-with-day jobs Jesse Northey, Lyle Bell and Kim Temple.
