Nieve Ella - How Long Will It Take?: Turquoise Vinyl LP + Signed Print DINKED EDITION EXCLUSIVE 432 *Pre-Order

Released Friday 16th October 2026
All pre orders will be fulfilled/made ready for collection on that date.

DINKED EXCLUSIVE 432

DINKED EDITION 432 £25.99 

• Turquoise vinyl *

• Alternative sleeve artwork *

• Signed art print *

• Limited pressing of 400 *
  
  

*EXCLUSIVE to Dinked Edition

Side A

101
Drive
Standing On A Pane Of Glass
Romance Is A Desert
Bite Back
At Any Cost

Side B

1) Angie
2) Love:Hate
3) I'M NOT DEAD
4) Back To Basics
5) How Long Will It Take?

Debut albums either arrive as a statement or instead pose a question. The question Nieve Ella has found herself asking echoes back, not only through her own life, but through the anxious existentialism of an entire two generations. How Long Will It Take? It’s a vulnerable question for the audience that has grown up alongside Nieve, gravitating towards her self-depreciating humour and straight-talking attitude. 

One image haunted her through the album writing process, and it’s one that is behind the album’s visual world: the staircase. “I feel like I’m on one neverending set of stairs and I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get to the top, and there’s no bottom anymore,” she muses. “You might stop and have a breather but you’re always on those stairs. My legs are wobbly now but I’ve got no choice but to carry on.” That staircase represents her career and the possibility of success, but it also represents her becoming more herself, a version that’s more together and less self-sabotaging. When is she going to get there? It doesn’t matter if you’re a teenager or in your late-30s, you’ll know the constant trying to keep up while being exhaustingly stagnant. Her thrillingly ungovernable debut alt pop album explores that frustrating journey, every metaphorical step of the way. 

Even as a young rebellious teen Nieve Ella could sense that staircase ahead. At school, she landed in serious trouble for making TikTok videos during lessons. “I was just chitchatting about my teachers or making jokes about Ofsted,” she laughs. “I’d get hundreds of thousands of views and had about 30,000 followers. It was all because I wanted to build a following so I could start posting singing videos.” Only a couple of years later, singing live every single day on that very TikTok account got her discovered by a young A&R and signed. “I think the school system really failed me and hundreds of thousands of other kids like me who are energetic, or creative, or anyone who breaks the mold,” Nieve says. “But if my brain wasn’t wired the way it is I would not be here today making music.” 

Growing up in a small village in Shropshire, Nieve loved Hannah Montana for the idea that a normal girl could switch into a popstar without anyone questioning her. “I used to go to sleep every single night wishing that we won the lottery so that I could have the money to be famous and live in a big house and have music lessons,” she says. Her musical father left the family and moved to Spain when she was four. When she was ten, he passed away, leaving behind two guitars. As a young adult, she began to learn guitar herself, and with it came a different understanding of her purpose: she wanted to make it in music for the both of them.

After three painfully catchy EPs of guitar-driven alt-rock, in the vein of Wolf Alice, beabadoobee, Wet Leg and The Last Dinner Party, Nieve Ella has built serious momentum: a support slot with girl in red, a performance at Reading and Leeds Festival, over 20 million streams, and praise from Rolling Stone UK, who called her a “leader in the next generation of indie.” But when it came to writing her debut album, she pushed her voice into new spaces. “I want to create a sound that people aren’t listening to yet and change culture,” she says passionately. 

In this original reimagining of alt pop, How Long Will It Take? experiments with dynamics flipping up and down at the same time, and is full of tiny intrigues and textures, reflective of Nieve’s “creatively chaotic brain”. “I’m not stable or put together. I’m 23 years old and this is the state of my being,” she says excitedly, of idiosyncratic music that has the slant of a rockier, grungier Lola Young. 
The album opens with the optimistic indie rock sound of “101” – we’re on the way somewhere! – but then Nieve calls out repeatedly: “TV falling.” For her, the sparse track was to lay out her state of mind immediately: “My brain is like a TV thrown out of a window, carrying all these stories and voices before it smashes.” At times, she admits, she is the one throwing herself out of the window, self-sabotaging and hurting those closest to her. 

First groove-led single “Drive” reintroduced Nieve Ella with a quiet swagger – heavy on the bass and drums, it pulses with attitude. The deliberately cheeky chorus “You wanna talk talk talk and blah blah blah” leans into the simplicity of pop boldness rather than shying away from it. On the brash second single, “Bite Back”, she cusses out two people who wronged her. But those flashes of self-assurance are always undercut with insecurity. Surprising third single, “Standing on a Pane of Glass”, is an alt rock anthem that brings a heavy operatic intensity to the stomach-churning feeling of being trapped in a mental headspace. She rides that same rock ‘n’ roll edge into “Back To Basics”, a brooding fourth single about trying, failing and admitting the damage. “Artists are normal people that love and hate and feel so much, and I wrote that song to make it clear that I’m not always the victim; I do handle shit wrongly sometimes,” she explains. 

Glitchy electro-pop ballad “Love:Hate” and mid-tempo dance-pop contemplation “At Any Cost” sit in the same emotional room. “They talk about how I feel in my current relationship, and friendships – I know that I take myself out on people and I’m not helping myself by doing that,” she says. Sunny indie rock bop “Romance Is A Desert” with hot riffs and sultry vocals could almost suggest reprieve in the form of a love song. But listen closer and the seduction and the dread are entwined in the images of the lyrics: “I imagine ‘you quench my thirst with your tongue in my mouth’ and it’s so sexy but there’s a snapshot of worry in my eyes – it’s almost like a horror movie,” she explains. 

This tornado of emotions spiral into the eye of the storm: the expansive title-track ballad, “How Long Will It Take?”. With a billowing vocal, she claws and grasps at the album’s biggest ask – “How long will it take to change?” – leaving the listener suspended between sadness, determination, resignation and hope. 

Nieve doesn’t want people to only know the light, fun parts of her. “I want them to know the mess behind the scenes,” she says proudly of this debut album, a record more interested in proof than polish. Proof that the drama in her head is survivable, maybe even useful: “I want to be that voice for people to feel like it’s going to be OK because I’m going through it too.” Nieve Ella doesn’t have the answers yet and she’s refusing to fake them – but the first step to salvation is always asking the right question. 

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