Linying – Swim, Swim
Los Angeles-via-Singapore artist Linying today announced her sophomore album Swim, Swim will be released on April 4th, 2025 via Nettwerk, sharing its vibrant lead single “Blondie” as an auspicious preview. Swim, Swim emerged from a disorienting but dreamlike period Linying spent partly living on the remote Filipino island of Siargao, during which the singer/songwriter embarked on what she refers to as a “parallel discovery of self and femininity”
Linying traveled there five times over the course of a chaotic year marked by personal heartbreak and the immense upheaval of moving to L.A. from her homeland. As she spent countless days in solitude, writing and exploring and playing in the ocean, she slowly began piecing together the songs of Swim, Swim: a soul-baring yet exuberant album about meeting life’s uncertainties with courage, curiosity, and relentless imagination. “By learning to lean into the unpredictable but also wildly beautiful landscape that surrounded me, I developed an intimacy with the part of myself that’s ruled by feeling and desire, after a lifetime of being partial to my rational mind,” says Linying. “For me these songs contain moments of rare feminine empowerment derived not from manipulating the circumstances with brute strength, but from reframing the narrative in a way that made me feel on top of it.”
Linying’s beguiling voice enchants on the standout single “Blondie” as she narrates the sublimely unsettling experience of revealing your most playful and childlike side to a stranger.
“It’s about a beautiful, idyllic day I spent swimming in a lagoon with someone I’d just met,” she says. “I felt so happy and light, but at the same time there was a part of me that kept thinking, ‘I’m not actually this light. You don’t know who I really am.’”
With all songs co-produced by Linying and mixed by Graber, Swim, Swim ultimately embodies a spellbinding fluidity that closely echoes her newfound sense of surrender. “My natural tendency is to ruminate and pick everything apart, but with this album there was a constant flow of movement,” she says. “The main priority was creating something that felt good to everyone involved, and there was a rejection of logic and reasoning that felt completely new and exciting to me.” On the fuzzed-out and frenetic “Donovan,” released as a stand-alone single in September 2024, Linying offers up a gloriously strange art-pop valentine to her closest collaborators on the LP. “I was thinking about the studio and how it’s housed so many big moments: me at my most fragile, my most hopeful, my highest, my lowest,” she recalls. “This album came from working through huge changes in my life and all the heavy emotions surrounding that—so much was expressed and realized, and I always felt so cared for by the people I was working with.”
#linying