NZM caught up with Vera Ellen in the aftermath of touring with Yumi Zouma in Britain and Europe, and headlining some shows her own in the UK. She was preparing to tour as support for Aldous Harding on her forthcoming UK and European tour, while getting ready for the release of her own third album, ‘Heaven Knows What Time’. Amanda Mills asked if she was busy?
Vera Ellen’s last album ‘Ideal Home Noise’ was released in 2023, and won her the Taite Music Prize in 2024. Since then she has released a digital EP titled ‘Heartbreak For Jetlag’, and for much of 2026 has been touring, performing (including at SXSW in Texas and New York’s New Colossus Festival), and planning the roll out of her third solo album.
This past year has also seen her take on some different types of performances at home; first as part of the all-women and non-binary cast of musicians in the Atomic 2.0 gigs, and then the epic two-week long Roundhead Studios’ live-streamed Infinity Sessions (branded as Make Us Feel Good About Life).
The invitation to perform at MUFGAL followed Ellen touring with Crowded House in 2024. Atomic 2.0 presented a different challenge in terms of being on stage for a long time, and learning the material, but she clearly loved the experience.
“What an amazing group… and just great songs. I mean, Patti Smith and PJ Harvey…. I did love doing Hate Myself For Loving You by Joan Jett, just because the attitude, those classic rock riffs!”
The show fed into her appreciation of cover versions.
“What’s hard for me is considering what can I actually bring to the song?” she says. “I have to kind of find what angle to approach something.”
In March 2026, she and bandmate Audrey May opened shows for international Kiwi act Yumi Zouma across Europe. Ellen says she loved the experience and felt fully included.
“It’s a pretty rare and cool experience to get to the end of a tour and just think, ‘Oh, I love these people.’ They were funny, warm, really generous to us, took us on board and made us feel just part of the group, rather than, ‘Oh, you’re the support band.’”
Touring Europe by train gave them downtime, and was she says, fairly low stress, as well as environmentally friendly. Madrid and Copenhagen were her favourite shows.
“We were lucky because we had not much gear. We didn’t use amps on this tour… if we’d had amps, another story,” Ellen laughs.
Seeing the audience energy as the support act, and observing how it affects the headline artists, has helped her understand the correlative dynamics.
“I think the main thing I’ve sort of learnt through performing in different places is that it really is a reciprocal event,” she muses. “We as the performers are so reciprocal to the energy of the audience. It’s like, ‘Are people dancing? Are people closing their eyes? Are people laughing? Are people receptive? Are people quiet?’ That’s what ends up being the good show – or the not good show!”
Staying on in the UK since that tour Ellen has been playing her own headline shows, preparing to perform at the Great Escape Festival in Brighton, and for opening Aldous Harding’s UK/European shows in May and June.
For the shows with Harding she will have more musicians, with her brother Albert Rivers, and bandmate Ben Lemi joining her. When we talk she’s planning and working through the logistics.
“I’m here visiting my Nana, and also booking cars, booking accommodation, learning about carnets, learning about insurance and frickin’ random stuff,” she laughs.
She’s excited for audiences to see Harding, and experience her performances.
“I think Aldous has that wonderful thing of being really kind of surprising… everyone loves her for her authenticity. She’s doing her, what she wants to do. She’s a true artist.”
These northern hemisphere shows are all in pre-support of her third album, ‘Heaven Knows What Time,’ released in NZ on Flying Nun in May 2026.
Much of the album was written and demoed in Greytown, where Ellen had a two-week songwriting residency awarded by the NZ Pacific Studio Artist Residency Programme in 2023. A work colleague had told her about the opportunity.
“It was one of those magic moments where I was feeling really overwhelmed,” she says. “I could feel that I had all the stuff inside, but I just wasn’t getting the hours that I needed to really let it out.”
The residency included a house and a small stipend, and at the end Ellen staged a performance for the community to showcase the work she had been doing. The expectation to perform was a good driver she says, and she worked hard.
“It was just, like, Vera unleashed – because I just had all the space and time! I had the bass on the floor, I had the keyboard, I had the drum machine, I had the guitar and I just left it laid out. I had my little recording equipment and I just demoed the entire album… kind of the bones of the record.”
She admits finding the isolation of residency hard.
“I went crazy from being alone so much. You beat yourself up, you’re annoyed at yourself, you’re not getting things done or you’re not writing enough, or it’s not good enough.
“I did little things to break up the pattern, like go for walks. One of the days I got my hair cut, I bought a wedding dress,” she laughs.
The ‘Heaven Knows What Time’ songs are inspired by personal experiences.
“I’ve just always been that kind of writer and I can’t escape that. I really struggle not to do that,” she reflects. “It is still very personal. It’s just a little more, maybe fun sounding.”
Some, like Gayfeva and Walking in Vegas, had been kicking around for a while, leftovers from earlier albums where they didn’t quite fit.
“I have a circular amount of songs,” Ellen laughs. “Gayfeva was one I’ve had in the canon for a few years, but it’s developed a lot and changed on the album. I feel like that song is one of those universal experiences a lot of people can relate to – when you’re in love with someone, or you really admire someone, and you know you’ll never be with that person…
“But you’re okay with it because it’s just really about being like, ‘Wow, you’re amazing and I just hope you know that,’”
She smiles observing that it was interesting to perform Gayfeva in different European countries. In Poland (Ellen has Polish ancestry) the song evidently connected with audiences.
“When we played that song, afterwards we had some queer couples come up to us and say they love that song, which was really special. I think it’s just about people feeling seen, and it was really special to have that moment during the set on this tour.”
While still reflecting the influence of personal experience, she was from the outset keen to create a more uplifting album, after the heaviness of ‘Ideal Home Noise’.
“This one was a freaking Rubik’s Cube to figure out,” she grins. “I went into it being like, ‘I’m going to write something light… I just want to be able to tour something that’s not going to drain me every time.’
“I don’t always want to give that level of myself every time I perform,” she expands. “I wanted something more fun and less serious, and less heavy. It still deals with heavy subject matters, but it’s a little more tongue in cheek… and I’m making fun of myself a bit.”
The album title arrived in a lightbulb moment in the middle of the night, on a house bus in Buenos Aires – almost a year after completing the mix.
“It was really, like disturbing me… nothing was sticking,” she recalls. “I was like, I’m just not going to name it until I know what it is. It’s just going to come. Of course that took four months!” she laughs.
Featuring in the lyrics of Walking in Vegas, the title refers to universal plans and timing. “The way it came to me was, ‘Heaven knows what time…’ It’s not on your watch, you’re just going along for the ride. I like that it’s a statement and a question.”
When It’s Over, a duet with fellow Pōneke artist Hemi Hemingway, stemmed from intuition.
“I was dating someone and we weren’t breaking up, but I knew we were going to. (Maybe that’s just me being really cynical and viewing people’s behaviour as predictable.) It’s coming from this weird place of heartbreak and pain, but before something’s even finished.”
She says Hemingway was perfect for the song.
“I also really wanted the male perspective in there. I thought it was funny writing the line ‘the cruellest girl I’ll ever know, you’re going to end up on your own.’ I was singing that to myself because it isn’t one-sided,” she laughs.
A fan of duets, she has recorded another with Hemingway, Oh, My Albertine, for his 2026 album ‘Wings of Desire’.
The video for When It’s Over (directed by Daniel Fletcher) is a stylish accompanying narrative that characterises the bittersweet nature of the song, with a true 1960s Vera & Hemi/ Nancy & Lee aesthetic, including Ellen’s truly epic wig.
“That was funny because I had to drive myself home and I was fully in costume… my wig was touching the roof!”
‘Heaven Knows What time’ was recorded in Wellington between The Surgery, Massey University studios, and bandmate Ben Lemi’s Dawn Diver studio. The two met in 2019 when he produced Albert Rivers’ album ‘Secret Intelligent Light’ (by A.U.R.A.), and have been working together since. Ellen rates Lemi highly and values his support.
“He’s just super experienced, and really guided me through a lot of the craziness of this industry. If I’m ever panicked or worried he’s such a rock, and he’s really good at being logical and considerate.”
After recording the drum tracks in other studios they decamped to Lemi’s studio and “spent countless hours doing everything else.” While Lemi produced the album, Ellen had a lot of say.
“I’m like that with all my albums,” she laughs. “It’s definitely got the Ben Lemi touch. He’s just got a really good way of keeping things going, but also is open to experimentation and my weird suggestions!”
One key consideration to the overall album sound was being able to play the album live with her band.
“I want it to be bass, guitar, drums, synth or something. I was thinking about it from the perspective of if an indie rock band can play it.”
Rather than a change in direction the lighter sonic touch is about serving the songs.
“I’m always going to be loyal to the song at the end of the day, whatever it needs. With Thaw, that started with the drum machine and then me just playing this riff. I was creating the music and then I was feeling the music. Whereas something like When It’s Over, that’s me writing. That’s lyrics and then like, a sad boy guitar! And then over time that develops into a full band track.”
She says her favourite from the album changes, but in the moment names both How We Say Goodnight and Getting Told Off By Mum – which, she says, encompasses the album’s themes.
“You think you know life, and it laughs,” Ellen smiles. “That’s really the tying theme from Spit @ The Sky, to Getting Told Off By Mum… this constant reminder that you trip and you fall, and you mess up. That you’re so fallible and you’re just human. You have to just keep getting up and going again.”
While enjoying this extended time overseas performing and touring, she well knows how difficult, and expensive, the life of an aspiring musician can be.
“It’s really hard doing this. I hesitate to say it because, on balance, I am just so extremely grateful… for every single little thing,” she says.
“All of this music that I’m making and all of these shows I’m doing and stuff, it’s motivated by something really, really deep inside of me… This is what I’m here to do and I really can’t do anything else. I’ve tried!”
