Emily Wells

ComposerSongwriterMusic ProducerArtist

Feb 28

Written By Arbel Bedak

Composer, Songwriter, Music Producer, Artist

Featured Credits

Stoker

Diagnosis: From The NY Times

Plainclothes

Highlights Reel

To download full credits and bio as a PDF, click here.

Credits

Plainclothes upcoming
Dir. Carmen Emmi
*Official Selection, Sundance Film Festival 2025, US Dramatic Competition
A Mission For Our Oceans, episode 1 (2021)
adidas x Parley | Branded Miniseries
Bespoke edit, “I Need A Placebo”
The Paris Review, season 2 (2019)
Podcast
Composer, original theme
Stoker (2013)
Searchlight Pictures | Feature Film
Dir. Park Chan-wook
Songwriter/artist, original song
Orange Is The New Black (2019)
Netflix | Series
Ep. 706 ”Trapped In An Elevator”
Song: “I’m No Heroine”
Sharp Objects (2018)
HBO | Series
Ep. 103: “Ripe”
Ep. 104 “Fix”
Song: “Mama’s Gonna Give You Love”
Riverdale (2017)
The CW | Series
”Chapter Twenty-Two: Silent Night, Deadly Night”
Song: “O Holy Night”
Runaways (2017)
Hulu | Series
Ep. 102 “Rewind”
Song: “Antidote”
The Night Before (2015)
Columbia Pictures | Feature Film
Dir. Jonathan Levin
Song: “Get Down”
Awkward. (2013)
MTV | Series
Ep. 313 “Taking Sides”
Song: “No Good”
Ep. 316 “Less Than Hero”
Song: “Los Angeles”
Dancing With The Stars (2013)
ABC | Series
Ep. 1704 “Week 4”
Song: “Symphony 6: Fair Thee Well & the Requiem Mix”
Project Runway (2008)
Bravo | Series
Ep. 414 “Finale: Part 2”
Song: “Joan of Arc”
2022
Regards To The End, album
2020
Passenger (2020 Rework), single
2020
In The Dark Moving, album
2019
This World Is Too _____ For You, album
2017
In The Hot, album
2016
Promise, album
2013
Mama, album
2008
The Symphonies: Dreams Memories & Parties

Bio

Forging a bridge between pop and chamber music, polymathic composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells (she/her) builds songs from deliberate strata of vocals, synths, drums, piano, string and wind instruments.

Wells has toured extensively throughout the world, including headlining performances at the Guggenheim Museum, Lincoln Center, The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, Sundance Film Festival, and the National Gallery of Art, and has shared the stage with artists such as Wilco, Japanese Breakfast, The Roots, and Son Lux. She has released six critically acclaimed albums including 2017’s “visionary” (NPR) This World is Too For You, and 2022’s “complex, vibrant, and dynamic” (Pitchfork) Regards to the End. She appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2016 to promote her album Promise, called “dramatic, meticulous, and gothic, by The New York Times. She is a 2022 NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts & National Sawdust Toulmin Fellow, and a 2020 New York Foundation for the Arts grant recipient.

Wells has written original music for film including an end credits song for Park Chan-Wook’s Stoker (2013) “Becomes the Color”. Her music has been extensively licensed across film, TV, and advertising, including features in Sharp Objects (HBO), Orange Is The New Black (Netflix), Bates Motel (A&E), Riverdale (CW), and The New York Times’ Diagnosis (Netflix), as well as in promotional media for Apple, Adidas, Nike, IKEA, among others. In 2022 Wells published an essay “I am not lost, I’m Looking” alongside Jia Tolentino, Samantha Irby, America Ferrera, and others in Amber Tamblyn’s collection Listening in the Dark (Harper Collins).

Wells’s evocative music (described as “thrilling” by Pitchfork) and performances (called “quietly transfixing” by The New York Times) impel listeners to be attuned. Her latest release, the ten-song album Regards to the End, explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience watching the world burn. A work of radical empathy, Regards to the End foregrounds the power of art, critique, and care to connect and perhaps redeem us.

Media

“A master of blending the worlds of classical and electronics.”
– NPR

“Surprise and precision are Wells’ greatest assets as a
composer, and Regards to the End is filled with both... It’s as if a rugged stone has been cracked open to reveal the sparkling angles of a geode—beauty erupting through the toughest planes.”
- Pitchfork