INTERVIEW: Ellis Piper: 200,000 Listeners and Still Figuring It Out
Photo by Philip Romano
“Classically trained on viola, Ellis Piper uses orchestral textures and intimate songwriting to turn historical subjects into deeply personal character pieces.”
As newly-Albany-based singer-songwriter Ellis Piper sits down across from me on the back patio of my favorite café in Schenectady, impeccably styled with a sweater and trousers combo best described as Sartorial Autumn perfectly complementing their falling-leaf orange hair, I can’t help but think, Damn, they really do obsess over everything.
In researching Piper’s work — which these days means scrolling as far back on Instagram as I can manage before my eyes get tired — it quickly became obvious that, in addition to all the songwriting and producing they’ve been doing (three full-length albums in four years, plus two new singles last month), they’ve meticulously curated their online presence. It’s to the point where all that scrolling reveals, among other things, an intentional, subtly-shifting color gradient of thumbnail images, from midnight blues to rusty reds to laurel greens.
On the patio, Piper chuckles. “Sometimes crafting a whole world includes hex codes.”
We’ve actually met to discuss not their social media strategies, but rather their new release, that double single, “Lullaby for Laika/Fantasia for Félicette” which dropped on September 25. The alliteration in the song titles hints at a whimsy and earnestness that underlies much of Piper’s songwriting, in terms of both themes and craft.
“Laika” a re-orchestration and re-titling of “Pioneer” from their 2024 album, Adjacent to Alright, finds Piper singing to the ghost of the real-life Soviet canine cosmonaut, Laika, who, at three years old, was launched into low-earth orbit on 1957’s Sputnik 2 mission, becoming the first animal to orbit the earth before dying just hours into the flight—spacecraft re-entry technology was not yet invented.
“Laika, my love/When they strapped you in/Did you give them all a kiss?” sings Piper, opening the song with a breathy, off-the-voice timbre that has come to characterize the bedroom pop genre. Rather than getting mired in the details of the dog’s demise, however, the lyrics choose to imagine a world where Laika is overcome by the beauty of a view never before seen so close before by either the once-stray mongrel or anyone else back on Earth. “Laika, I hope that it’s magical/Hope that it’s dazzling,” Piper offers to the perished pup in the chorus. Amidst a warm swell of strings, drums, theremin, and background harmonies (arranged with Wisconsin-based collaborators Sam Swinnerton and Ellie Kashinn of the band We Just Met), Piper finally concedes their true feelings: “More than it all/I wish I could bring you home.” It’s at this point that one wonders if there’s a more personal reason why the artist would get this emotional over a dog who died seventy years ago.
“In the spring of 2024, my family dog, Daisy, passed away super unexpectedly.”
Ah. There it is.
“I wrote a bunch of songs about Daisy, and none of them were very good, and none of them were very helpful to me and my healing.”
Tapping into what Piper calls “cultural osmosis,” they remembered hearing about Laika, then embarking on a deep dive into the story and realizing that space and the physical distance between ground control and Sputnik was an apt metaphor for death and the spiritual distance between them and Daisy.
The song’s success has spawned more than a handful of covers by fans on YouTube. And it’s that love for Ellis’ work that turns the conversation back toward their marketing.
I tell Ellis that I was surprised to find a lack of videos of them performing live, save for a Tiny Desk submission, one song at NYC’s 54 Below, and a handful of clips recorded in their home.
“With a lot of the songs that I've released, I didn't really play live a lot. This is a relatively new thing for me. The 2026 thing has been to play live.”
Piper’s releases have all come in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I’m curious if live music’s slow return thereafter was the cause of the dearth of live videos.
“It was partly the pandemic, it was mostly me being in school and having enough on my plate and wanting to keep this a fun little hobby on the internet. But for that reason, I've never really just played stuff until I'm super comfortable with it before recording it,” they hedge.
Referencing several upcoming shows, Piper adds, “I'm planning on playing quite a few [songs] I haven't released yet, just to try them out. I'm not a very confident person in general, musically or otherwise, so this is a great opportunity to do that and kind of figure out how I want a song to sound instead of just figuring it all out in front of my dog.”
I’m surprised to hear about this insecurity, given how flawless their public self-presentation is, but it’s starting to make sense now. Rather than pouring lots of energy into booking gigs and honing live arrangements, Piper — as a result of the pandemic-era economy and stated lack of self-confidence — has instead capitalized on their knack for creative direction to support their multi-instrumental talent and an intuition for lyrics to connect virtually with hundreds of thousands of people across the web. (They reached their 2026 goal of having 100,000 Instagram followers just a few weeks ago and their press kit totals 200,000+ followers and listeners across social and streaming platforms.) Still, Piper isn’t ignorant to the limits of that strategy.
“It has served me, but I don't think it's going to serve me any more than it currently is, so let's pack it up. I would like to build an audience that I actually know and am a little closer with, so unfortunately I think I have to be myself, a little louder and a little messier.”
That means hunting for new ideas in their songwriting too. More than a few of the lyrics in “Fantasia for Félicette” are sung in French, a first for Piper.
“Ma petite étoile…/je veux que tu restes/Ici, avec moi.”
In English: “My little star…/I want you to stay/Here, with me” (Piper provides the translation themself in that press kit.)
It also means reaching into their bag of influences for inspiration. A banjo’s twang on “Félicette” speaks to the artist’s upbringing in North Texas and the inescapability of country music.
“My mom, when I was very small, had a CD in her car of The Chicks' greatest hits. I bawled my eyes out to ‘Traveling Soldier’ so many times.”
Piper also points to storytelling greats Peter, Paul and Mary and their song “Puff, the Magic Dragon” as a kind of permission to mythologize animals in these singles (Félicette the cat was part of the 1960s French space program and did return after her flight).
They also cite “Steven Universe” composer and songwriter, Rebecca Sugar as a major influence.
“[The show’s] instrumentations are so fun. It blends electric and acoustic…there’s a lot of chiptune and synthy stuff, and then some silly guitars and ukuleles and twangy stuff. I really liked the genre fluidity of that.”
While “Laika” and “Félicette” feature more traditionally-lush orchestrations, several tracks on their 2026 album, Lovebird (which Piper describes as their “Oops, all love songs record”), venture outside of that sound into bossa nova (“Slumbersong”), bluegrass (“Fallin’ In”), and doo-wop (“Nothing Ever Lasts”).
Maybe Ellis doesn’t give themself enough credit for venturing out of their comfort zone. Putting such disparate genres on a single album (and sometimes on a single song; “Wouldn’t It Be Fun” is half-salsa, half-disco) is the sort of loud and messy tactic that they’ve been saying they need to try out.
Still, if it works it works. Ever the marketeer, the press kit for the new singles spells out a few angles for potential write ups about the songs:
“Dreamy, intimate songs for anyone who has loved and lost a dear pet.”
“While Laika became an enduring symbol of the Space Race, Félicette’s story nearly disappeared.”
“Classically trained on viola, Ellis Piper uses orchestral textures and intimate songwriting to turn historical subjects into deeply personal character pieces” (which I’ve conveniently used as the pull quote for this article).
And these are all true. But what strikes me most about this set of songs is their economy. Piper’s synthesis of the histories of space and their own grief, from which the most emotionally-poignant details have been culled and distilled into three-and-a-half minute tracks (roughly 100 words each, not counting repeated choruses) is a testament to their work ethic. The same perfectionist tendencies that deliver both an unassailably well-crafted IG grid and a website that answers every question you could possibly have can transmute themselves into something quite the opposite: tender reflections on life and death that — in the same way a loved one, with, perhaps, a simple hand on the shoulder, can say so much without saying anything at all—speak for themselves succinctly, no further explanations required.
So what’s next for Piper? Maybe another move.
“I love the Northeast and I love being here. And I don't know if I'm going to be here forever, but I really like it.”
Piper’s move to Albany followed their graduation from the University of North Texas College of Music, a six-month sublet in New York City, and a brief stay with family in rural Vermont. (UNT also happens to be where I did my Master’s; we were there together in the College of Music for the 2023–24 school year without realizing it.)
“I have to decide whether I actually feel okay about living in a big city or not. I would love to go back down to [New York]. I would love to go up to Montreal. These are my considerations. But for now, right here is really fun.”
Piper’s double single, “Lullaby for Laika/Fantasia For Félicette,” which I would also describe as really fun in spite of its somber backstory, is out everywhere now. You can also catch them on October 26 at Mt. Ida Preservation Hall opening for Simon Elijah. Visit ellispiper.com to experience their incredible website for yourself and follow them on Instagram @ellispipermusic and YouTube.com/ellispipermusic.
