Emily Millard returns to her rich, languid songwriting in her fourth LP, Hazy Blue (Oct 2024). The long-awaited record honours the love ballad—the soft and the sad, the layered and complex. Hazy Blue is a moody folk-pop soundtrack that layers Millard’s soaring voice over lush orchestration and magnetic grooves. The result is an album of unabashed love songs—a teenage breakup, a whirlwind affair, an unworn engagement ring, love as grief, 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 and Raham adopted a collaborative approach, inviting spontaneous creativity that transformed Hazy Blue into a microverse of sonic storytelling. Millard’s prismatic voice anchors a swirling soundscape of synth drones, drum machines and acoustic instruments. Previously performing under the moniker Miss Emily Brown, she has toured extensively through Canada and Europe, garnering nominations for a Canadian Folk Music Award, Vancouver Island Music Award and CBC Bucky Award. A cross-genre artist, Millard draws from pop, jazz and folk traditions to create “a complex sonic world all her own” (Exclaim!).