Elli Perry began her career as a performing singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer at age twelve by sneaking onto barroom stages around her home state of Georgia. During the subsequent twenty years, she independently released multiple albums of original material, designed and co-directed award-winning music videos, wrote charting songs for other artists, was awarded several artists development grants, and toured aggressively across the United States, Canada, and Europe.
And then she was run over by a minivan.
While in the midst of touring the two records she released in a ten month period between the years of 2017-2018, a woman who was texting and driving struck Elli while she was on her bicycle. The accident resulted in a traumatic spinal injury that damaged Elli's voice, impacted her mobility, and brought her touring career to a halt.
Her forthcoming record, GHOST TALKER, was written over the course of the years she spent recovering from that accident. Crafted while navigating physical and psychological isolation and frequently debilitating chronic pain, the record explores the terminality of all things- love, relationships, culture and place, faith, life itself. But for all the ghost stories it tells, GHOST TALKER is a collection of songs that seek out hope and potential in the dark corners of loss; to quote the title track "What lives will always die, what dies is coming back to life again.”
Like her prior releases, this body of work defies genre, shifting from ambient alternative indie to Southern Gothic folk and experimental, punk-influenced rock. The thread of continuity throughout these stylistic twists and turns is the power of her live performance. On stage, Elli Perry may be a melancholy mesmerist, a ballsy chanteuse, or a howling one woman vocal wrecking crew- sometimes all in the same note. Hers is a raw and arresting presence; whether alone with her guitar or as the powerhouse front woman of a band.
After many years of peripatetic wandering, Elli returned to Georgia and found her way to Savannah, a city that proved the perfect landscape for bringing GHOST TALKER to life. Recorded live at the locally beloved Back Room Record Studios by Grammy-nominated producer and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Sovine, it features support from some of Savannah's most laureled session players. Elli and her band have quickly established themselves as a unique and electrifying element within the city's musical ecosystem, where they've headlined sold out shows and supported national touring talent.
Relentless and prolific in her creative output, Elli’s skills as a multi-disciplinary artist have allowed her to craft a uniquely haunting visual world around the music of GHOST TALKER. An accomplished seamstress and costume designer, she makes all of her own clothing, including her striking stage wear and on-camera ensembles. Her paintings, photography, and multimedia art have adorned her album artwork, tour posters, and handmade one-of-a-kind merchandise, yielding a conceptually cohesive aesthetic. She has written the storyboards and co-directed all of the music videos for GHOST TALKER, capturing starkly beautiful and sometimes unsettling imagery that has garnered many thousands of views across YouTube and social media platforms.
Elli released the first single from GHOST TALKER in the summer of 2025. She will continue to release singles and music videos throughout the year while touring in support of the project, both solo and with her band.