Canadian singer-songwriter Emily Millard fuses folk tradition with bold sonic exploration.

Her latest release Hazy Blue (Oct 2024) is a lush, vocal-driven album that layers intimate storytelling with lush orchestration and magnetic grooves. Single “The Cost of Love” spent two months on the CBC Top 20 chart, climbing to #5.

A collection of unabashed love songs, Hazy Blue marks a return to Millard’s rich, languid songwriting. Her cinematic lyrics zoom us in and out: a teenage breakup, a whirlwind affair, an unworn engagement ring, love as grief, and love as healing.

Recorded in July 2023 at Vancouver’s Afterlife Studios with co-producer and engineer John Raham (Frazey Ford, Dan Mangan, Destroyer), Hazy Blue features a dream line-up of Vancouver’s finest folk musicians: Leon Power (drums), James Meger (bass), Gavin Youngash (guitar), Elisa Thorn (harp), Trent Freeman (violin, viola), Molly MacKinnon (violin), JP Carter (trumpet) and Sam Davidson (clarinet). Millard’s prismatic voice anchors a swirling soundscape of analog, digital and acoustic textures.

Hazy Blue joins a considerable collection of albums. By Heron & By Season (2016), which earned a rare 9/10 from Exclaim!, took Millard on an expansive Canadian and European tour. Previous releases include three LPs and two EPs under the moniker Miss Emily Brown.

In 2010, Emily released In Technicolor, a folk-pop record based on her grandmother’s wartime diary. The album was nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award in the category “Pushing the Boundaries” and took Emily to the top five nominees for CBC Radio 3’s Bucky Award for Best New Artist. Her 2008 debut release Part of You Pours Out of Me was named one of the top twelve albums of the year by Alan Neal, host of CBC Radio’s Bandwidth. 

Millard has collaborated with such luminaries as The Fretless, We Are The City and Aerialists and has shared the stage with acts such as Frazey Ford, Alin Coen Band, Jeremy Fisher and Fred Penner. She was nominated for Best Live Show 2017 by Berlin’s Kulturnews. Millard previously released numerous albums with collaborator Corwin Fox as the chamber-folk group Morlove.

Emily gratefully lives and works on the traditional territory of the Sinixt, the Ktunaxa, and the Syilx peoples, as well as Métis and many diverse Indigenous persons.

"'Art-folk’ is certainly an apt handle for Millard’s work, as this is a greatly artistic recording, carefully crafted like the considered brushstrokes of a painting.” - Folk Radio UK

"Millard's complex sonic world is all her own. We are lucky to take part in the trip. (9/10)” - Exclaim!