Ella Raphael

Channeling the wistful, melancholic essences of French pop, teen idols, and Skeeter Davis, Ella Raphael works as a singer/songwriter whose sound carries an otherworldly character. The spectral quality of her debut album, Mad Sometimes, surfaced in 2024, shaped by an alluring plainness and the innocent tone of her vocals.

Raised in London, she absorbed the work of landmark jazz singers including Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Etta James, together with her father’s Beatles and Stones LPs. Encounters with fellow musicians and a chance to perform on a boat during a visit to Australia convinced her to treat music as a profession. A scholarship brought her to Berklee College of Music in the U.S., but the school’s strict regimen felt uncongenial, so she moved her studies to Valencia, Spain, where she drew from exotica, Tropicalia, Karen Dalton, Serge Gainsbourg, Vashti Bunyan, the films of the French New Wave, and the simple freedom of writing outdoors.

To record her first LP she called on producer Eyal Samson and a compact ensemble of jazz players, expanding the instrumental range to include lap steel, mandolin, congas, and synthesizers. Gentle, ghostly, and aching, Mad Sometimes appeared on Fire Records in October 2024 and was followed by a U.K. tour supporting Rain Parade and Marina Allen.