In Conversation with Dylan Ella
On November 25, 2025, I trudged through the mud and snow to the Wendy’s across from Allard Hall. For those unfamiliar with this Wendy’s, I’d like you to imagine it as the equivalent of a modern-day saloon. Aesthetically, it’s full of the same stuff as any other Wendy’s: posters bragging about square burgers hang from the walls (I’m still mystified), a sleek red and brown colour palette covers the chairs and tables, and beneath it all, a white floor that looks like it’s had a light amount of pepper spilt across it. But no matter how much set-dressing Wendy’s does, it can’t hide the fact that it’s a saloon. Everyone appears on edge; hands on their pistols and their eyes flitting around the room like they’re following an invisible fly. I get called to the register, order my square patty, and take it to a booth where I watch, wait, and wonder how long I’d have to sit there before I saw the fly.
This is where I met Dylan Ella for an interview to discuss her newly released EP, Pocket Sized. Pocket Sized is laid-back, cozy, and warm. It features personal and idiosyncratic lyrics blanketed in pillowy guitars and grounded by a tight rhythm section. The songs are about love, which Dylan somehow manages to make feel new due to the fresh ways she explores the topic.
As I was waiting for Dylan, I grew slightly nervous. I’d never had a prolonged conversation with her, nor had I ever done an interview, so I had every reason to believe this could go terribly. Luckily, I didn’t have to sit in my anxiety for long, as Dylan appeared on time, bundled up as tightly as the little brother in the hit movie, “A Christmas Story”. We greeted each other and shared in a bit of small talk, where Dylan told me she was on day eleven of twelve days worked in a row. She regularly does live sound for Edmonton’s many venues, and fills out her schedule by taking shifts at the Capitol City Vintage Mall. After a quick “Oh man, that sucks” from me, a silence crept up on both of us. I didn’t know Dylan well enough to ask her about her personal life, so I flicked my eyes over to my notes and took the plunge.
At the release show for Pocket Sized, Dylan had mentioned she’d been sitting on the songs for a long time. “I think they date back to... 2022 is the earliest?” says Dylan. “It was like a year of my favourite work that I picked.” Were they all part of one idea, I ask, or did she write them more in spurts? “They were all kind of random. They were just like snapshots of life at the time. I would write one, and then I would write things in between that never made it to fruition and are stuck in my phone somewhere.”
Pocket Sized began taking shape during an unusual period in Dylan’s life. She was attending MacEwan and writing and recording in its studios just as the COVID-19 pandemic was coming to a close. Dylan also stated that recording at MacEwan by itself was a unique experience due to the abundance of time students have in the studios, and because of all the pricey gear within them. “I was really lucky to have, you know, a free space to record, with really expensive gear, and software. Y’know, this, that, and the other thing. And I'm just never going to be in that situation [again]. I mean, maybe one day down the road, but, like, that's, it was a very lucky situation that it happened the way it did.”
Though I didn’t know much about Dylan prior to the interview, I had done some research. In 2018, she had put out an album titled Feel My Guts. How did she think this compared to Pocket-Sized? “I had a very different career then. And not that I'd have anything against my solo work, and I enjoyed my solo work at the time, but I find, especially in the city, it was putting me in a box.” How so? “There's a box when you are a young female singer-songwriter, where you're going to be put on bills with a bunch of young female singer-songwriters. And the people who are going are young, female singer-songwriter, friends of yours. And it's kind of just like, nobody new really goes in, right? Sometimes in that genre, there's such an expectation to be soft. I’m not a soft person. I am a very opinionated, you know, a strong-willed woman, and, like, sure there's people who are able to do that, but I just, like, found that I kind of had to break into a different genre where I'm not. You know, where I can be loud if I want to.”
We sit in silence for a moment as I probe my page for questions. What aspirations does Dylan have beyond Edmonton? “I really…” she pauses, “This is not a question I think about often, which maybe I should, but I don't think about it often. I'm not someone who has big goals, just because I feel like the world we live in is so unpredictable... that I'm kind of just thinking about how to get to next week. But I would just I would really like my music to reach all ends of Canada, and I would really like to play outside of Edmonton in the future.” Dylan pauses for a second, then she says, “I would just like to play Sled Island.”
Several of the songs on Pocket Sized struck me as interesting, specifically “Sushi Joint in a Western Town” as well as the EP’s only cover, “So Much Wine”. “‘Sushi Joint in a Western Town’ I wrote as a joke. I literally wrote it as a little goofy, ‘What if I wrote a country song LOL?’ I guess it was also my response to living in Alberta, [where] you make a lot of money if you have a country band, but not if you have anything else.” And what about “So Much Wine”?
Dylan takes a sec. “I had someone very close to me pass away. And a month later, I went to a show with a friend on a whim, and I didn't feel like going at the time. But the girl who opened played that song and I had, like… Felt like I heard it before. And when I was dealing with the after effects of this long-time friend of mine who passed away, a lot of his playlists were still on Spotify, so I was listening to them, and that song popped up. And I was like, ‘No fucking way.’ It was hard to record. But I think that's what makes it special.”
Pocket Sized is a tight project. Its songs fit together thematically, musically, and flows smoothly from one to the other. The EP is nothing more than it needs to be, but that’s fine; in fact, it’s great. By the end of my conversation with Dylan, I began to feel much the same way about her as I did Pocket Sized. Dylan is a total pro who knows what she’s capable of. Whether she’s writing fun and compact indie rock songs or behind the soundboard at the Aviary’s frequent Noise Cafés, she does it snappily and without excess. The world is unpredictable, and the city keeps Dylan busy, but I’m glad she’s focused in Edmonton: our little pocket sized part of Canada.
