"I'm A Worm and I Don't Have Arms": Ella Molsee on "Unsaid Truths", Small Critters and Touring with Legit Smitty

As a bug buzzes around me and indie-pop singer/songwriter Ella Molsee on a Friday afternoon, she tells me a story about saving a bee.

“I made friends with a bee this week,” she starts. “It had a broken wing… it was trying to fly. And I was wearing this red cardigan, and I put my hand in the sleeve, and I offered the bee my hand. The bee crawled onto my sleeve, and I took it over to a bush that had some flowers in it.”

Ella Molsee, photo by Addison Hilton.

Such sidewalk happenings, small but endearing details of life, make their way into Ella’s songs. She uses a metaphor in “The Dog”, a recently released track included on her upcoming debut EP Unsaid Truths, “The worm in the grass could not save her dear friend.” Ella describes the situation in question, “[It’s] about my friend from high school… We had a really strained relationship, and I felt as though I was being used… to help him… in a way that wasn't healthy… And I was like… ‘We're both worms, and I do love you, and you need to move to the grass, please, [but] I can't pick you up, because I'm a worm, and I don't have arms.’”

Unsaid Truths, out tonight, communicates such truths that Ella represses out of fear that they’ll be received the wrong way. “I end up writing a lot about vulnerability and my desire for that, but also my difficulty with it. I've had a streak of being open and not being received in the way that I would have hoped to be,” she explains eloquently. “And that makes it difficult to continue to be open. Yet, I think I must continue to, because it is the honest thing, and it is the true thing.”

Ella values places where the acknowledgement of hard truths and the willingness to add positivity to humanity align. She tells me about a friend of hers who hosts weekly group dinners where they discuss how they can be “agents of light” amidst bad things happening in the world. Ella personally feels seen when asked good questions or given good compliments.

But along the lines of her EP title, she recalls a time when repressing the truth made her more of an agent of darkness. She speaks of an unreleased EP track, “Elephant”, “I had a crush on this guy… and not telling him was eating me up… there was an elephant in the room with us, always.” She describes the sound of the track, “It's kind of Ethan Gruska-ish… it's very, like, Phoebe Bridgers adjacent [but] a little bit more rock and roll.”

The Unsaid Truths EP cover

When making this EP, she took inspiration from the female-fronted group Rat Boys, the rhythmicity of Slow Pulp, and the lyricism of Samia, Phoebe Bridgers and Adrianne Lenker. She also looked up to some fellow artists in her circle, including Michael Alan Scott and Mali Velazquez. Lastly, she cites Death Cab for Cutie, a band native to her home state of Washington.

As she, a junior in college, anticipates this EP release that’s been in the works since her freshman year, she also prepares for tour. She will be playing bass for Jake Smith of Legit Smitty and traveling to Chattanooga, Atlanta, Greenville, Charleston and Columbia. She tells me excitedly about Charleston, “We have a tour [schedule] document, and the guy who's headlining… He has a show and interview. And then, between that and the show we're playing that night, there's this one line, and it's in a yellow font that's like the Indiana Jones font, and it says, ‘Go to the beach.’”

Ella Molsee performing at the Exit/In, photo by Addison Hilton.

This tour and EP release follow Ella’s appearance as part of the Sisters in Song showcase at Nashville’s Exit/In on March 29, which you may have seen me covering on this blog. My fond memories of Ella’s set make me all the more excited on behalf of the people who get to see Ella on tour later this month. Look at Ella’s tour schedule here. Unsaid Truths will be available on all streaming platforms on April 17 at midnight ET.