Lee Emi – Destroy Everything

Today, Lee Emi (Emilee Petersmark of The Crane Wives), announced her debut solo album DESTROY EVERYTHING, set for release on October 2.

Leaning into the sharp bite of her dark indie-pop-rock sound, the project is less an act of demolition than reinvention – a collection of songs that confronts uncertainty head-on and discovers that self-definition is not a destination, but a lifelong act of creation.

Alongside the announcement, Lee Emi has shared her new single + video, “Clean Slate.”

First premiered via Atwood Magazine, the powerful indie-rock track explores the tension between escape and renewal with a yearning to leave the past behind and start over. Paired with a cinematic video, the track captures the search for a clean slate in the face of lingering uncertainty.

Lee Emi explains, “‘Clean Slate’ is a song that deeply considers the option of giving up and starting over. It contemplates the point you reach after making more mistakes than you can fix, wondering if it’d be easier to seek out a new start rather than try to clean up your mess. The song also touches on what you bring with you when you start over, all the things you can’t run from.”

To celebrate the release of DESTROY EVERYTHING, Lee Emi has also announced a special hometown show in Grand Rapids, MI on October 3.

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.”

#emsauce