A name not unfamiliar to us here at ATB after an appearance at the the 2025 Manchester Folk Festival doing an English Folk Expo showcase. Canadian roots outfit Diyet & The Love Soldiers mark their return with new acoustic EP Seeds Of Dreaming and a consecutive UK tour to match.

Drifting between Americana, alt-country and folk, the new EP draws deeply from Diyet’s upbringing in Kluane, Canada and her life as an Indigenous woman navigating two worlds. Sweeping landscapes, cultural tensions and hard-won hope all find their way into songs exploring wildness, truth, reconciliation and community.

Born and raised on the land in the Kluane region of Canada’s Yukon Territory, Diyet embodies her Indigenous, Japanese and European roots with a musical presence that is just as diverse. A singer-songwriter with over 25 years of professional experience, she writes and performs in both English and Southern Tutchone, her native language. Her songwriting explores modern Indigenous perspectives on ancestral philosophies, traditions, trauma and healing.

Diyet’s new acoustic EP – Seeds of Dreaming is out now as she joins us for a Why I Love on the inspiration of Canadian Inuk musician, broadcaster, documentary filmmaker, activist, and actress, Elisapie:

ENVSIONING ELSAPIE

When I envision Elisapie, two things come to mind. Unafraid creative curiosity and the memory of meeting her for the first time. There was no handshake or polite introductions; we hugged, and it felt like family.

To get inside of Elisapie’s songs, you need to envision the depth of a country. If I say Canada, most people think of politeness, vast wilderness, bears, and snow. Their thoughts are of the north, yet when we probe one step further, we find out that most people’s actual understanding of Canada is Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, or Vancouver. Major centres situated close to the southern border, and let’s be honest – most Canadians have never visited north of the 60th parallel. It’s a foreign no man’s land. When I say that, I don’t just mean the physical land. Entwined in that no man’s land is a complex and tangled barbwire-sharp story of a country that has only begun to dance with the word reconciliation.

But then you have an artist who straddles the cosmopolitan and the wildness of the north like these opposites are two sturdy sides of a wild Mustang that never needed to be broken or tamed. As a fellow Northern musician, you sit up and take notice.

AN UNFOLDING OF DEFIANCE

When I first heard Elisapie sing the words to a Willie Thrasher song, Wolves Don’t Live By The Rules – a song I was already familiar with – I saw an unfolding of defiance and independence run across the tundra. Underneath the song’s simplicity, there is a woman connected to that centre part of herself. I was stunned.

A CONNECTION

As a songwriter and a Northern Indigenous woman, I feel a deep sense of connection with Elisapie’s sense of songwriting and performance. While we come from different cultures, my roots are in the Southern Tutchone tradition of the Kluane region of the Yukon, and Elisapie is Inuk from Salluit, Nunavik; there is a shared understanding that comes from being shaped by the North, by our identities, and by the extra  responsibilities we carry as artists.

Her album from 2018, Ballad Of A Runaway Girl, was on repeat for many months. It was an album I didn’t feel a need to dissect. I could play it and connect, appreciate, and understand. I could picture my Inuit friends with their direct and simple language on the surface; layered, complex, theatrical, and symphonic beneath the surface. I could picture a nose scrunch, laughter, a deep wound, and no bullshit.

The land teaches us how to listen, how to be patient, and how to tell an honest story. I hear that sense of place in Elisapie’s music. There’s a spaciousness and emotional clarity that reflects northern life and is translated into sound. Language is one of the most important parts of that connection for me. Choosing to sing in Inuktitut is a way of keeping language alive and present, especially for younger generations. It’s an act of love and responsibility. When we bring our languages into music, we’re not just preserving them we’re allowing them to grow, to travel, and to be heard in new spaces.

INUKTITUK

Her latest album from 2023, Inuktitut, is a collection of cover songs translated into Inuktitut that tell a story like snapshots of defining moments. We all have a song that brings us back and sums up a time and place. Elisapie did this in a way that created a depth and different telling from the familiar version of a song we all know. I don’t know the direct translation of Uummati Attannarsimat (Heart of Glass), but it doesn’t stop me from going back to age 18, running wild, trying to act like I was already grown. I’m listening to Blondie, feeling nostalgic, vintage, and daydreaming of what my life will be.

Maybe what I admire most is her creativity and how she continues to redefine what music can be. She blends language and tradition with contemporary sounds in a way that feels both rooted and forward-looking. There’s freedom in that, and also a deep respect for her language and culture. Our identities as Indigenous women are not separate from our art. They are the foundation of it. There is strength in what Elisapie does, but also vulnerability and care. Creating from a place that honours where she comes from while also speaking to where we are now.

Our thanks to Diyet for an inspiring Why I Love.

She tours the UK in May-  tickets HERE

Here’s the latest single, Eighth Wonder:

You can read more from our extensive archive of Why I Love pieces from a wide array of artists on an even wider array of subjects, here.

Diyet & The Love Soldiers: Website

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