Death is the ‘ultimate truth': Long Beach singer Emily Yacina’s heavy inspirations for new album ‘Veilfall’

Emily Yacina is obsessed with how we talk about grief and death. It’s why the Long Beach-based singer-songwriter chose to hyperfocus on those heavier topics on her new album Veilfall.

Yacina, who has been primarily self-releasing her music for over a decade, spoke with LAist’s Antonia Cereijido on her decision to stay independent and why she took a more vulnerable approach on her new album.

How TikTok gave Yacina’s music a second life — and a path to musical independence

When Yacina was a freshman at Haverford High School in 2011, she and another student musician named Alex G created a song called "Treehouse." The song’s premise is simple. It’s about a lonely person not wanting another person to leave their treehouse.

A decade later, the song blew up on TikTok. The song’s lo-fi production, hypnotizing synth and moody lyrics captured a Gen Z audience that resonated with the song’s nostalgic feel. Now, the song has amassed over 410 million streams on Spotify alone.

“ Luckily, because of the 'Treehouse' situation, I'm able to, like, fund my own work,” Yacina said. “I feel like it's sort of set me up to be able to hire amazing musicians and a great studio space in Long Beach called Dream Machine.”

Yacina has been primarily self-releasing music since then, saying she likes being able to call the shots on her creative direction.

On how hosting death salons helped Yacina process loss

The topic of grief is all over Yacina’s new album. Somber lyrics like Clarity’s “Death laughs at denial and pours it back into the earth” were pulled from the 29-year-old’s personal experiences with death throughout her life.

She said two close friends died in an untimely manner. And one of them was a collaborator on her 2019 album Remember the Silver.

“ I just sort of realized like, ‘Oh, this will continue to happen because [death] is the one true thing,’” Yacina said. “So then, I just became really interested in how we talk about death in our culture and sort of got obsessed with it a little bit.”

While working on her new album Veilfall, Yacina hosted so-called death-themed salons at Heavy Manners Library in Echo Park, where she guided strangers into talking about their grief in a group setting.

Emily Yacina stands at Heavy Manners Library in Echo Park, the space where she hosted death salons with strangers to help them with grieving.

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Courtesy Emily Yacina

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“ There's always overlap with people's experiences,” Yacina said. “I think that's why it's special because [grief] can be such an isolating thing. But really, everyone is going through these similar feelings and have the same thoughts about mortality. And we always have weird coincidences, like three people whose dad died will all be there on the same night and we'll be able to talk about it.”

Veillfall is out now. Yacina will be opening up for indie rock project Frankie Cosmos on the West Coast portion of their tour, including at Santa Ana’s Constellation Room on Oct. 9 and L.A.’s Teragram Ballroom on Oct. 25.