Vera Ellen is back — and she’s come down with a touch of fever.
The Taite Music Prize-winning singer-songwriter has announced her new album, Heaven Knows What Time, will be released on May 1st via Flying Nun Records.
According to a press release, Ellen’s forthcoming record follows a period of “unconventionality,” during which she learned to “embrace the chaos that comes with being a self-sustained artist in today’s constantly driving culture.”
“Heaven Knows What Time is less about thinking and more about just being — embracing the masks we wear, but also allowing ourselves to take them off and bare it all; the exhausted, the messy, the fear, the adventure, and all of the joy too,” the press release adds.
Ellen wrote the album during a two-week songwriting residency in Greytown, awarded through the NZ Pacific Studio Artist Residency Programme. Longtime collaborator Ben Lemi handled mixing and production.
Arriving alongside today’s album announcement is lead single “Gayfever”, which is described as “an anthem of that joy — dedicated to a person so infatuating they were deserving of their own sing-a-long.”
The absurd and alluring music video, helmed by Ellen’s ex-bandmate Jerry Ramirez and starring Zipporah Norton, can be watched below.
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It’s been three years since Ellen released her excellent album Ideal Home Noise, which we named one of the Top 80 Best New Zealand Albums of the 2020s So Far last year.
“If 2021’s It’s Your Birthday hinted at much to come, Ideal Home Noise was her confirmation. Born out of a troubled period of Vera’s life, her latest full-length record journeys between light and dark, hope and despair, the tracks anchored by lyrics that makes a listener feel less alone in facing their own battles,” we praised.
“Some artists would kill to have just one potential singalong anthem like ‘Homewrecker’ on their album, but Ellen has another few to boot, particularly ‘Imposter’ and ‘Carpenter’. The latter of these tracks is a towering achievement of songwriting and scope, a grand centrepiece to the album.”
Ideal Home Noise won the coveted Taite Music Prize in 2024, and Ellen said she was “still in shock” when we caught up with her backstage immediately after her triumph.
“You know how you think that people will secretly know, and then they just act shocked? Like, no, I literally didn’t know… And then when it was my name called – I’m still really shocked, honestly,” she told us.
She followed that with a nomination for Best Alternative Artist at the 2025 Aotearoa Music Awards, following her win in the same category in 2022 for her album It’s My Birthday.
Vera Ellen’s “Gayfever” is out now. Heaven Knows What Time is out May 1st via Flying Nun Records (pre-save/pre-order here).
