Breagh Isabel has a song to make your Pride Month even more prideful.
“Carrie” dropped on streaming platforms on June 25. The pop tune, co-written and produced by Nashville-based singer Robyn Dell’Unto, details the wistful daydream of creating a character out of a stranger. The new single was one of several Isabel recorded for her upcoming debut EP, and even has a visualizer directed by Halifax-based director Griffin O’Toole.
“It was towards the end of a two-week writing trip,” says Isabel. “So I was writing that day with my friend and amazing writer-producer Robyn Dell’Unto, and it had been kind of a busy few weeks of writing. So, I was running a little bit low on song ideas and inspiration.”
Isabel began thinking about one of her favourite bands, MUNA, and all of the danceable crush songs they have in their catalogue. While it felt like they hit a wall, a little bit of brainstorming led to Isabel telling Dell’Unto a story from that morning.
“I was walking from my Airbnb in the park this morning,” Isabel had told her producer. “I saw this girl that looked super familiar, and I just kind of went on a whole daydream in my head, just wondering, what is her story? Where is she from? Where is she going? Who is she?
“We just kind of ran with that idea,” she continued. “We picked a name and started this whole made-up love song about someone that I’ll probably never meet.
The track is a mixture of soft synth chords, popping drums and vocal effects that make the chorus fill the room. Isabel thanks Dell’Unto for her production touches on the single, and says that much of her upcoming EP was a product of collaboration. She’s worked with names such as Donovan Woods and Connor Seidel, as well as instrumentalists Dylan MacDonald, Dan Ledwell and Derek Hoffman.
“I’m a big collaborator in every aspect of music. I love co-writing. I love co-producing. It is rare that I do a song 100% on my own, and I think that’s just a product of how I came up making music,” says Isabel.
Isabel has been active in the Halifax music scene for almost a decade. While she’s released a few tracks under her own name, she’s primarily written songs for other artists, and has also notably contributed songs to popular media franchises like Grey’s Anatomy and Orange County, Batwoman and, more locally, Sullivan’s Crossing. She has also collaborated with the aforementioned Donovan Woods, Ria Mae and Classified.
For her, the EP is made up of songs she couldn’t give away—songs that held a piece of her that the only way they would see the light of day is if she did it herself. It started with her song “Imposter” which dropped in September 2024.
“It always felt really personal to me,” she said of “Imposter.” “It didn’t really work for any other projects other than my own, but it was unreleased. It was just sitting on a computer hard drive.”
The song would get placed in the soundtrack for the queer film Lakeview by Halifax-based director Tara Thorne. This pushed Isabel into releasing the song more widely, coinciding with the movie’s debut.
“It was really cool to see the response I got,” said Isabel, who hadn’t released songs for a couple years up to that point. “I got a lot of nice messages from people on social media asking, are there more songs coming?”
This success led her to wrap up her EP, tying up its loose ends and getting it out into the world, ultimately leading to the release of “Carrie” as a single ahead of the EP’s debut on July 17, 2025.
“Carrie” isn’t her first time writing a queer anthem, either. Isabel wrote her 2021 song “Girlfriends” about a friendship turning romantic. With different forces threatening the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, it seemed important to Isabel to release another queer-focused song that was joyful.
“There’s so many dark and scary things happening in the world, especially around trans rights,” says Isabel. “I think it’s important to both take Pride as a time to reflect that Pride started as a protest with the Stonewall riots—and there’s still a need to protest and speak up today—but I think for a lot of people, an important part of Pride is celebrating how far we’ve come. We’ve still got a long way to go, but we definitely made strides.
“I think songs like ‘Carrie’ just kind of reflect that queer joy of just living and loving openly as a queer person. That feels more important today than ever.”
This article appears in Jun 1-30, 2025.