Zella Day

Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Zella Day blends Baroque pop, folk, and twangy indie rock into her distinctive style. Recognition arrived during the early 2010s when she fused contemporary pop with an unfettered bohemian sensibility. Still in her late teens, she had already issued an independent album and signed with Hollywood Records, whose B3SCI imprint put out her first label effort, Kicker, in 2015. That release reached number seven on Billboard’s Top Alternative Albums chart and supported appearances at festivals including Lollapalooza and Coachella. Her sound has since grown more densely layered and stylistically eclectic, a direction evident on the 2020 EP Where Does the Devil Hide—produced by Dan Auerbach—and the 2022 album Sunday in Heaven.

Born in Arizona, she spent her childhood in a modest mountain community outside Phoenix, where her parents operated a café and art space whose eclectic patrons encouraged her musical curiosity. She began playing guitar at nine and soon started composing, drawing from the classic singer/songwriter LPs in her parents’ collection as well as the stark landscape around her. While still attending high school she put out her first independent album, Powered by Love.

After moving to Los Angeles, she drew widespread attention in 2012 when an acoustic version of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” accumulated millions of YouTube views. She soon shifted toward a richer, pop-centered approach that prompted some observers to liken her to a brighter Lana Del Rey. Her initial single, “Sweet Ophelia”/“1965,” surfaced in April 2014, followed that October by a self-titled EP on the California indie B3SCI. The full-length Kicker arrived in 2015, produced by Wally Gagel and Xandy Barry of Wax Ltd.; it peaked at number seven on the Top Alternative Albums chart and number 65 on the Billboard 200. Subsequent touring alongside Fitz and the Tantrums and Michael Franti accompanied the standalone singles “Man on the Moon” and “Hunnie Pie.”

In 2019 she left Hollywood Records and began working with Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach for his Easy Eye Sound label under Concord. The resulting Auerbach-produced EP Where Does the Devil Hide, fronted by the single “People Are Strangers,” appeared in 2020. Additional tracks emerged afterward, among them the 2021 collaboration “Holocene” with Weyes Blood. October 2022 brought her third studio album and second for Concord, Sunday in Heaven. Produced by Jay Joyce with further contributions from John Velasquez and Alex Casnoff, the record revealed a shimmering, ’70s-inflected pop/rock direction.