Lee Emi Shares “Smoke in Empty Rooms”
Lee Emi
Shares Single + Video
“Smoke in Empty Rooms”
Debut Album
DESTROY EVERYTHING
Out October 2
Announces US Tour This November
Dates + Tickets Available Here
Album Release Show in Grand Rapids on October 3
Tickets Available Here
“’Smoke in Empty Rooms’ is beautiful in its precise simplicity, its delicate notes,
and the expansive atmosphere through which Lee Emi brings her most private struggles
into the everyday. Through vivid imagery and intimate songwriting,
she turns personal isolation into something that feels unexpectedly collective.” – Ladygunn
“‘Clean Slate’ is an emphatic, surging indie rock reckoning
from her upcoming debut album ‘DESTROY EVERYTHING’ – Atwood Magazine
Photo Credit: Lori M. Gottschling
Today, Lee Emi (Emilee Petersmark of The Crane Wives) shared her somber new single + video, “Smoke in Empty Rooms,” from her upcoming debut album DESTROY EVERYTHING, out October 2. First premiered via Ladygunn, the captivating, whisper-fragile track offers a raw introspection into Lee Emi’s feelings during the pandemic. Stripped-down arrangements reveal the softer, more reflective side of her fiery upcoming album, with her voice stretching across a skeletal backbone of acoustic guitar before layered harmonies and lung-rattling breath sift into the mix at the climax. Accompanied by a surrealist music video, the song grapples with grief as lonely lyrics sink into the blood, Lee Emi’s clarion voice carrying every ounce of heartsick pain as she explores the complicated emotions of losing someone close.
Lee Emi elaborates, “This song came from the depths of the COVID-19 lockdown, unable to go to a loved one’s funeral, desperately trying to find human connection through FaceTime calls, listening to my dad cry on the phone and wishing I could be with him, knowing that I couldn’t. ‘Smoke in Empty Rooms’ is about that feeling of isolation, and the fear of losing someone you’ll never get to say goodbye to.”
To celebrate the release of DESTROY EVERYTHING, Lee Emi has also announced upcoming tour dates across the US this November, kicking off with a special hometown show in Grand Rapids, MI on October 3. More information and tickets are available here.
“Smoke in Empty Rooms”: Watch / Listen
DESTROY EVERYTHING LP: Pre-Save Here
Sometimes you have to tear apart the stories that you’ve filled your life with before you can truly understand your deepest self. On DESTROY EVERYTHING, singer-songwriter Lee Emi bravely faces that challenge, dismantling assumptions about identity, kinship, and even her own physical body in search of something more enduring. Written across the compounded isolation of a global pandemic, a rare kidney disease diagnosis, and a lifelong search for belonging as a Korean adoptee raised in Michigan, the album finds Emilee Petersmark stripping identity down to its foundations. Even the moniker Lee Emi reflects that journey. “My original name was Lee Sang-Eun, but I was always afraid to use it,” she says. “For this project, we’re going to burn down what doesn’t serve us anymore and mix the Western and Eastern culture.”
Though DESTROY EVERYTHING marks her solo debut, Emilee Petersmark is hardly a newcomer. Since 2010, she has served as primary songwriter and co-lead singer/guitarist for indie-rock group, The Crane Wives. She has played countless sold-out shows across the US and Europe with the group and has released five studio records with the band, all while quietly building a personal cache of songs that would eventually become her first solo record.
Throughout DESTROY EVERYTHING, Lee Emi captures both the aching pain of life’s darkest moments but also the righteous, hopeful feeling that only the strongest can see peeking through. For all its talk of fire, collapse, and unraveling, the project is ultimately a reflection on construction. “When things are unfair or unjust or when they feel like they can’t be fixed, I just want it to break,” Emi says, describing an impulse that has followed her since childhood. Across these songs, that urge becomes a tool for clearing space for something truer to grow, something powerful to reach through isolation, illness, grief, and uncertainty to connect with listeners in their own darkest moments. By tearing down what no longer serves her, Lee Emi hasn’t simply discovered herself, she’s built a foundation from which to keep becoming both for herself and for others. “I’m in remission from my kidney disease, and have done a lot of work in the past four years in terms of mental, emotional, and physical maintenance,” she says. “I finally feel like I have the experience and the confidence to just do the job well.”
DESTROY EVERYTHING Tracklist:
1. Black Hole
2. Spinning Plates
3. Empty Spaces
4. I Warned You
5. Destroy Everything
6. Smoke in Empty Rooms
7. Margaret
8. Before The Lights Went Out
9. Fuck Me Up
10. Clean Slate
11. Don’t Wake Me Up
Live dates:
Oct 3 Grand Rapids, MI @ Pyramid Scheme (Album Release Show)
Nov 6 Columbus, OH @ Skully’s
Nov 7 Pittsburgh, PA @ Thunderbird Cafe
Nov 8 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church
Nov 10 Towson, MD @ The Recher
Nov 11 Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom
Nov 13 Albany, NY @ The Lark
Nov 14 Boston, MA @ Crystal Ballroom
Nov 15 New York, NY @ Racket
Nov 17 Buffalo, NY @ Iron Works
Nov 19 Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom
Nov 20 Ferndale, MI @ Magic Bag
Nov 21 Kalamazoo, MI @ Bell’s Backroom
Nov 22 Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
DESTROY EVERYTHING Album Art
Follow Lee Emi:
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