Sister Ray: Be Kind (And Maybe Kiss Someone)
Sister Ray. Photo credit: Vanessa Heins.
When Sister Ray the moniker of Ella Coyes speaks about their new record Believer, they often return to one word: together. Not in the glossy, performative sense, but in the raw, breathy way that comes from playing music face-to-face, letting imperfections linger, and learning to trust the take that feels honest, not perfect. Believer, out now on Royal Mountain Records, is a quiet act of rebellion against the grid-like precision that defined Coyes’ pandemic-era debut Communion. Where that record was shaped by heartbreak, distance, and digital splicing, Believer leans into warmth, imperfection, and vulnerability - an embrace of music as communion, not just confession.
Born and raised in Sturgeon County, Alberta, and now based in Montreal, Coyes came up in the Alberta DIY scene - playing house shows, building community through sound, and finding space to begin exploring their queerness. That formative experience still echoes through their work, even as their surroundings have shifted. “The first record feels so specific to Alberta to me,” they say. “But I noticed this time, I was thinking a lot about home while being somewhere else entirely.”
Living in Toronto (where Believer was conceived before being recorded in Brooklyn), Coyes found themselves daydreaming of wide-open spaces, long drives to B.C., and the strange intimacy of small communities. “Toronto is a city for the first time I couldn’t just drive to the mountains,” they laugh. “There’s no nature in the way there was back home.”
But while the landscape changed, the need for connection remained constant. After the disjointed process of making Communion across closed borders with collaborators in the U.S., Coyes was determined to return to the core of what music meant to them: playing it, together, in the same room.
Teaming up again with Jon Nellen, who’s previously worked with Adrianne Lenker and Nick Hakim, the two laid down the beds of each track live, no click track, no comps, no endless takes. Just two musicians, feeling their way through the shape of a song.
“We would play until we felt like we had the take,” Coyes recalls. “And then we wouldn’t go back. We said, ‘That’s it.’ We trusted that. It was scary, but it was real.”
That commitment to presence also extended to the writing process. In the lead-up to recording, Coyes and Nellen challenged themselves to send a song a day back and forth. Not for polish (many didn’t make the record), but as an exercise in vulnerability, consistency, and letting go of perfectionism. “We were learning how to be silly, how to be embarrassed, and still be okay with it. And that cracked something open.”
Believer reflects that shift beautifully. Where Communion often explored the sharp edges of heartbreak, Believer feels like a quieter, more compassionate aftermath - a record that acknowledges complexity, contradiction, and self-doubt, but chooses kindness anyway. “There are songs on this record that I wrote to myself in a hopeful way for the first time,” Coyes shares. “I used to feel like I had to prove I was self-aware by trash-talking myself. But this record is more about saying: these are the things about me I don’t love, and that’s okay.”
While Believer finds its strength in stripped- back honesty, its sonic palette draws on a lineage of storytellers unafraid to linger in discomfort. Coyes cites Neil Young as their all-time favorite, a touchstone they once resisted but have now fully embraced. Lucinda Williams and Sun Kil Moon were key references throughout the recording process, not just for their lyrical precision but for the way their records breathe, with imperfections left intact. “We wanted to hear breath,” Coyes says. “To know that real people are working together.”
Other guiding lights include Adrianne Lenker, whose solo records Coyes calls “brilliant,” and collaborators like Marc Ribot and Paul Spring, who brought their textured, lived-in sensibilities to the sessions in Brooklyn. Closer to home, Coyes continues to find inspiration in the songwriters orbiting their communities - both past and present.
In Toronto, they champion the work of Charlotte Cornfield and Sam Tudor, while back in Alberta, they shout out longtime friends like Marlaena Moore (“her new record is insane”) and Lauren Dillen of Burs, now releasing solo material.
“So many of us end up moving away, to Montreal or elsewhere,” they say, “but those roots are still there. That scene shaped me.”
That sense of trust and interdependence runs through the record, echoing the artist’s hopes for what listeners might take away.
“I hope someone kisses to this record,” Coyes laughs. “I hope it’s a space that feels more kind than what I’ve made before.”
Now preparing for a run of tour dates, including rural stops and time in the U.S. with The Weather Station, Coyes reflects on their artistic growth with a steadiness that mirrors the record itself. “Writing is the thing that makes me feel safe. It used to feel like I had to suffer to make art. But now, the songs themselves feel like care.”
For a record that emerged from the quiet conviction that something more honest was possible, Believer doesn’t shout its thesis. Instead, it invites you in, asks you to stay a while, and reminds you that sometimes the best music is the kind that doesn’t flinch, even when it trembles.
