Lee Emi Releases Debut Solo Album ‘Destroy Everything’

For years, Lee Emi has been known as Emilee Petersmark, the voice inside the Michigan indie quartet The Crane Wives. ‘Destroy Everything,’ her debut solo record, arrives under the name she was born with, Lee Sang-Eun, and that shift is less a rebrand than an argument about which parts of a life get carried and which get set down.

The eleven tracks took shape across the pandemic, a diagnosis of a rare kidney disease, and Emi’s ongoing search for a connection to her Korean heritage as an adoptee raised in Michigan. Identity, belonging, illness and grief run through the record, but they arrive as questions rather than statements.

‘Smoke in Empty Rooms’ is the clearest entry point. Spacious acoustic guitar and a deep, folksy vocal carry it, with layered harmonies entering only after the song has settled into its own quiet. Built around the fear of losing someone without ever getting the chance to say goodbye, it moves from stillness into a claustrophobic need to escape. Elsewhere the album opens outward: ‘Black Hole’ pushes against self-doubt, ‘Empty Spaces’ traces the fear of letting a long-suppressed part of herself be heard, and ‘Clean Slate’ turns toward the possibility of starting again.

Emi plays a release show at The Pyramid Scheme in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on October 3. A November tour opens in Columbus, Ohio, on November 6 and runs through Philadelphia, Towson, Albany, New York, Boston, Buffalo and Cleveland before returning to Michigan for dates at Ferndale’s Magic Bag and Kalamazoo’s Bell’s Backroom, closing in Chicago.