Odd Doll Records expands Misfit Music’s empire

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This article was published 22/02/2025 (244 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Elise Roller and Claire Boning aren’t playing around. The local music execs are aiming to redefine the country’s mainstream music landscape with the launch of their new label, Odd Doll Records.

Through the female-owned label, which launched this week after two years in development, the business partners at Misfit Music Management plan to support musicians from underrepresented communities.

“There’s a lot of conversations about representation and equity and supporting underrepresented talent and marginalized communities and there’s more action starting to be made, which is great. But there’s still a really long way to go,” says Roller, Misfit’s founder and chief executive officer.

“We still see the Canadian mainstream primarily being dominated by white men, in terms of what’s being played on the radio and what is given the best shot at success.”

They’re also thinking geographically.

“It is a priority to concentrate on Western Canadian artists, because there’s very little support in Western Canada from an industry standpoint,” Roller adds.

The first artist signed to Odd Doll is franco-Manitoban Afropop/soul singer-songwriter Kelly Bado, who on Wednesday released a new single, La Danse — a rising, swirling ballad about persevering through life’s trials and tribulations.

While Roller and Boning are both anglophones, they’ve been taking French lessons to better support their bilingual client.

“We’re going to keep getting contracts in French and we want to understand them as well,” says Boning, Misfit’s CFO and COO.

As musicians themselves — Roller, a Calgary transplant, is a former member of Solhounds and Boning drums with Winnipeg indie group Veneer — the pair hope to make the process of signing with a label less convoluted for the artists they work with.

“One of my first bands was signed to a local label and we didn’t understand anything about it; there was no transparency,” Boning says.

“We gladly go over the agreements with people … and we’ve talked to our own lawyers: ‘We need to make this as understandable as possible, we can’t have all this legalese; can you try to make it less intimidating?’”

Distributing and licensing music through Odd Doll is a natural addition to Misfit, which offers both mentorship for self-managed artists and full-scale management services. The company, launched by Roller in 2021, represents a diverse stable of Canadian talent, including Super Duty Tough Work, Jade Turner, Kimmortal, Kaia Kater and others.

Bado is the first client to move through each stage of Misfit’s new development-to-distribution pipeline.

“I’ve been working with her on these actual songs that we’re now going to be releasing under our label,” Roller says. “That’s a really exciting prospect.”

The Odd Doll expansion is not without stakes. The record label is one of few women-owned enterprises in the male-dominated industry, locally and abroad.

“Female leaders in creative industries are frequently dismissed and held to higher performance standards,” Roller says. “Everybody makes mistakes … but when you are a leader from an equity-seeking group, your mistakes are often unfairly attributed to your identity, rather than seen as part of being human.”

Boning hopes their work with Odd Doll and Misfit is a positive example for other women looking to break into the industry.

Misfit was recently nominated for Organization of the Year by Women in Music Canada. It’s the only company in the category from outside Toronto and the only local representation among this year’s list of nominees.

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com