Helvella, better known as the stage name of UK-born musician and writer Eliza Gregory, is a vocalist, composer and lyricist from Beverley, East Riding, UK.

Initially active in a range of underground bands and collaborations, she eventually adopted Helvella as a creative engine for her full artistic scope — a liberating shift that accommodates a rotating cast of collaborators while anchoring a singular, evolving voice.

Rooted in gothic songwriting and shaped by the UK's punk, hardcore and metal scenes, her work blends avant-garde noir with spoken word and experimental sound. Influences include Nina Simone, Siouxsie Sioux, The Bangles, Tchaikovsky’s Peter and the Wolf, new wave, and the literary work of Maya Angelou, the Brontës, John Donne, US Beat poets, Seamus Heaney, and Grimm fairytales.

Her critically praised albums ’Let the Long Night Fade’ and ‘The North Wind‘ are available on Bandcamp, building on a legacy of earlier projects including as founder of Ivy’s Itch and Row of Ashes, which received attention in the underground press and outlets such as Kerrang! NME and Metal Hammer, plus more. Past collaborations include Necro Deathmort, Ladyscraper, and Sam Underwood (Ore), with whom she formed the experimental duo Pleura.

Helvella has received commissions from Arts Council England and the Wellcome Trust. For ACE, she composed a soundtrack to an animated reimagining of the Finnish tale Sampo. For the Wellcome Trust’s collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Consciousness, she created The Hierophant (Coma Music) — a 10-minute piece exploring the state of coma through guitar and wordless voice, later featured on a BBC radio programme.

A formative influence was a DIY tour of Europe: although her band dissolved just before departure, she travelled anyway, joining a friend’s group and discovering new possibilities for independent musicianship. Her first performance was for Radio 1’s Oxford Sound City, and she later performed as a solo poet and vocalist at Cube Fest (Virginia Tech, US) following a stopover in New York.

Her broader creative practice includes composing the score and shooting a short film featuring artist and Professor Emeritus John Newling. She was nominated for the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2017 and awarded a bursary to attend Arvon at Lumb Bank. Her writing has appeared in publications by the Royal Philharmonic Society, Lazy Gramophone Press, and Highgate Poets.

Her work is archived in the British Library’s Contemporary Music Collection.