Bio

In a studio tucked into the west end of Montréal — where cats sleep on half-finished paintings and tape recorders glint with glitter — Hanorah is composing herself, again and again. Through sound, through colour, through story.

Her voice — honeyed, thunderous, aching — carries the echoes of soul music’s past, and the shimmer of something unnameable. Her songs hold grief in a slow dance, melodies brimming with joy. She sings not just to be heard, but to remember. To recover. To return.

From the debut EP For the Good Guys and the Bad Guys (2019) that garnered national attention to Perennial (2022), her cinematic coming-of-age, Hanorah has walked the long road of transformation — through pain, through play, through poems set to music. For years, she has brought her soulful sounds across North America and the UK, sharing stages with legends like Mavis Staples and Lee Fields, as well as Aysanabee, Dominique Fils-Aime, and Coeur de Pirate.

Her latest EP Closer than Hell (2025) marks her latest evolution: lush, layered, dreamlike. An indie-soul offering tinged with her signature nostalgia and vocal power. This small but powerful collection of songs has garnered the attention of Earmilk, Bandcamp Daily, CBC’s The Block, held the #1 album spot on CJLO, and landed Hanorah her biggest show to date at Montreal Jazz Festival’s big stage.

And still, she writes. Still, she listens. Still, she builds bridges between the body and the voice, between then and now, between what was broken and what is becoming.