A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Elliott started teaching herself to play her father's old guitar at the age of 15, then also took up the piano. A couple of years later, in 2012, she was inspired to write her first song following the death of a neighbor. Still in high school, she covered a Brooke Fraser song for a student talent show, and the positive reception encouraged her to pursue music as more than a hobby.
Elliott finished high school, then took a year off and headed to Portland, Oregon to write and record with producer Clif Magness, who invited her after a family friend passed him a few of her songs. Demonstrating a more acoustic-minded singer/songwriter pop, the resulting EPs Notions of Truth and Notions of Love were issued in April and May of 2014. Four months later, Elliott enrolled at Harvard University.
She kept working on her music as a philosophy student, playing shows on her own and earning opening spots for artists such as O.A.R., Alanis Morissette, and Brandi Carlile in 2015. While continuing to perform during breaks from school, she released her more fully produced debut single, "Might Not Like Me," in early 2017. The girl-power anthem led to an invitation to sing on the Dzeko single "California," which was met that June by over a million plays on streaming sites in its first week. She followed it with the social media-inspired "Psycho Stupid Crazy" later that same year and opened a show for Lifehouse and Switchfoot at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
In May of 2018, the same month she graduated from Harvard, Elliott released the song "Time of Our Lives," her debut for Nashville's Big Yellow Dog Music and Atlantic Records. The labels' first joint release, it appeared on the Time of Our Lives EP four months later. "Might Not Like Me," which was also included on the EP, peaked at number 12 on Billboard's Adult Top 40 Airplay chart late in 2018. The seasonal single "Walking in the Snow/River" appeared in late 2019, and Elliott returned in 2021 with "Tell Me I'm Pretty," which cracked the Top 40 of the same airplay chart. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi