Lee Emi – Destroy Everything

This Friday, Lee Emi (Emilee Petersmark of The Crane Wives) will release her highly anticipated debut album, DESTROY EVERYTHING.

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.

As a final peek into the project, today Lee Emi shared the titular focus track + video, “Destroy Everything.”

First premiered via Earmilk, the sultry, explosive title track burns with the urge to tear everything down and begin again. Its fiery production is like flames of a forest fire, while Lee Emi’s haunting vocals rise up through the smoke.

Beneath its scorched surface, the song captures the destructive impulses that can take hold in difficult moments – the temptation to demolish all that lies in our wake. Lee Emi harmonizes with a pitch-shifted shadow version of herself, laughing as the flames rise alongside her. Rather than let the pain of a broken relationship fester, she knows that sometimes you need to burn it all down.

Lee Emi elaborates, “‘Destroy Everything’ is about those self-destructive impulses that whisper to us when we’re feeling unsatisfied. It is the devil on your shoulder drowning out your better judgement, coaxing you to do something you’ll regret.”

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.”

To celebrate the release of DESTROY EVERYTHING, Lee Emi will be embarking on an upcoming tour with dates across the US this November, kicking off with a special hometown show in Grand Rapids, MI this Saturday, October 3.

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

#ermsauce