New Music Monday: Ella Slaughter empowers women with debut single ‘the saints i pray to’
Following viral social media success.
Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
To date, there have been 89 New Music Monday features published through this collaboration.
This week, Ella Slaughter is the New Music Monday highlight!
Ella Slaughter is a Victoria-based singer-songwriter and folk musician who has become a major player in the local music scene.
She moved to Vancouver Island five years ago without knowing anyone in Victoria. At the time, she was convinced her music-playing days were over.
“I’d been singing my entire school career, but for some reason when I went to university it just didn’t stick,” Slaughter told Victoria Buzz.
“I kind of came with nothing and no expectations and found myself surrounded by super talented and creative individuals—it just re-ignited a passion for me.”
Slaughter started singing again at the Hermann’s Upstairs blues jam sessions before the venue was taken over by The Coda.
There she collaborated with friends and other local musicians to form a cover band, along with a bluegrass band that would explode onto the scene. Eventually, she released a song of her own that received a massive amount of online attention.
“From there I was able to start a second project with Poppa Don Gernie—put the boys onto bluegrass,” said Slaughter.
“I was actively performing with those for three and a half years until I was finally brave enough to put my own music on the internet.”
In June 2025, she released a short video featuring a snippet of her debut single “the saints i pray to” and the outcome was massive.
The video received over 12 million views across social media platforms and felt like the push she needed to start actively pursuing her own solo music career.
Highlight track – “the saints i pray to”
Slaughter says the song came to her while she found herself surrounded by male musicians, who she has a lot of respect and admiration for, but left her feeling isolated as one of few women in the scene.
“I was just in so many male-dominated spaces—there were so many soundchecks and stuff where I’d look around and be the only woman in the room,” she explained.
“At the time, I was living in a shared house with five other men and I just felt like I needed to create a sanctuary for powerful strong women who will not be beaten down by the male-dominated world.”
The song highlights some of the many women Slaughter looks up to that were strong, powerful and surrounded by men.
She noted that writing the song came really easily and naturally to her, and that when a song comes to her, it comes all at once.
Slaughter wrote “the saints i pray to” in 2023, and said she would just play it to herself as a sort of lullaby when she picked up a guitar, but that she was too scared to show it to anybody.
“It just felt too vulnerable and too raw,” she said.
“It spawned as a sanctuary, as a place of refuge for sure, but now it’s become kind of a rallying cry for women, especially right now in the times that we’re living through.”
She says she ended up getting the final push to post it when she showed it to a friend in a moment of vulnerability, but they laughed at her. Slaughter says that spite was the ultimate driving force for her to post it.
Once the video went viral on social media, Slaughter was faced with a new unexpected challenge because numerous major music labels began reaching out to her to make a deal.
“With the video garnering as much attention as it did, I was pretty immediately put into this machine that I had never seen or experienced with the industry side of things,” she explained.
“It was really hard to discern what was someone really honestly trying to help me and what was somebody trying to profit off of me.”
After a few attempts to record the song, which included a painful fall from a 10 foot deck and some time for recovery, Slaughter recorded the song with local producer and musician Sofia Miller.
After it was recorded, mixed and mastered, Slaughter released it to the world on October 1st, 2026.
“Her presence and her strong conviction of, ‘this needs to come out,’ was a huge part in me being able to put this song out,” she said.
“I’m so happy that it’s out and I’m so deeply proud of it and so ecstatic at the reception it’s received.”
Check out “the saints i pray to” by Ella Slaughter below:
Hear the song in full via Tidal, Apple Music and Spotify. Slaughter also noted that it will soon be available on Bandcamp.
Now that her debut single has been released, Slaughter is working on recording more originals and is playing a couple shows in the coming month.
She is playing a single release show on Wednesday, November 25th at the ‘Pour and Famous’ speakeasy venue space underneath Glitch in downtown Victoria. There she will be joined on the bill by Rebecca Runions.
Keep an eye on Ella Slaughter’s Instagram to stay up to date on shows and future releases.
Related:
- New Music Monday: puddler explores dissociation on debut single ‘melt’
- New Music Monday: PINDN explores addiction and recovery on debut album ‘Spirits Back’
- New Music Monday: JP Meldrum creates cartoonish experimental electronic record
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
“Local radio is the backbone of the music scene, it is an important organism and ecosystem of Victoria’s music scene and CFUV does so much for our community,” said Slaughter.
“CFUV is a rockin’ organization and to be a proud listener and supporter of it is something I wear with a badge of honour.”
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of Ella Slaughter in the comments below!
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