rchel is a creative project launched by rachel hanna in 2018.
Earliest inspirations include her late grandfather who played in a Portuguese folk band, Joan Jett, and ripe tangerines.
Born in 1999 and raised in Toronto, Canada, she taught herself how to play guitar at eight years old. She has since also picked up the mandolin, ukulele, piano, violin, and bass guitar.
She spent much of her time in high school looping guitar tracks and only became interested in singing when looking for cheap new layers to add to her compositions. She pulled phrases from journal entries, rewrote certain lines to make them rhyme, then recited them into the mic dangling from her earbuds.
in late 2018, with the intention of improving her production skills, Rachel set the goal of creating and releasing one song per month for the following year. By the end of 2019 she had released 14 songs (with two extras in December).
An unexpected result of her packed release schedule was a newfound love of making cover art. Experimenting with local artists and her own abilities, Rchel slowly developed visual consistencies that aligned with the themes in her music.
Rachel happened to meet painter and multi-media artist, Noelle Meharchand, in the summer of 2018. Noelle later made the artwork for grace’s secret (2019), roach (2019), stupid cute (2019), how to:fly (2021), crushing wasting (2021), hold my breath (2022), and star$ (2024). She’s also designed Rchel merchandise for shows and markets. More of Noelle’s work can be found at @newtsandskinks on Instagram.
In 2020, My Love reached 100,000 streams after being included in various editorial playlists. since then, rchel has released a few songs per year. she started performing live after the release of her most recent ep, primadonna sonic (2024). rchel uses a loop pedal to build each track from the ground up on stage and typically performs solo.
In 2025, Rachel started working on her debut album and this website.
The album is set to release summer 2026.
