The eponymous lyric from Jackie West’s debut album has been running through her head throughout most of her life: “Only the wind can pull my body/close to the mystery.” Before it found a home in her hazy, Julee-Cruise-like ballad Ethereal Nature the line functioned as a mantra for the Brooklyn singer-songwriter. It seemed to point her towards inspiration and clarity just out of reach. The breathtaking Close to the Mystery (out May 10 via Ruination Record Co.) threads together many moments of searching and reaching out—pulled from a variety of relationships and settings, articulated through a range of musical points. Its masterful baroque-pop songs form abstract scenes in a larger story about a self and worldview taking shape; in each, West assesses different, transient versions of herself, making revisions and absorbing the changes into a fuller, more finite draft. 
Today –after having her on our TRISTE© MIXTAPE feature– we have the great honour to host the exclusive premiere of her debut album!
Scroll on down below to listen to Close To The Mystery and don’t forget to click on through to the band’s Bandcamp page to pre-order it before it releases on May 10th. Do yourself a favor and don’t sleep on this one; it’s going to be one of the best album of the year.

Yea-Ming Chen is a San Francisco-based singer-songwriter who delivers a pure and simple indie country sound with heartfelt and sincere meaning. Her low, dusky tones recall ‘60s German singer Nico, although Chen was most inspired as a young adult by pop punk indie bands like Mr. T. Experience, The Queers and Dressy Bessy. “Bands like that,” she says, “made me realize the power of a simple song.” At the same time, the drama-filled pieces on her favourite Fleetwood Mac album, Rumours, taught her that despite life being full of difficult moments, “beautiful songs are created because of its complexity. It makes the hard stuff worth it.” A songwriter for 15 years, Chen has learned from experience that a broken heart is the best for inspiration. Piano was Chen’s first instrument, but as a teenager, she picked up guitar and more recently, the drums. A classically-trained pianist from age seven, she started formal studies in music at UC Berkley, but left the program after finding it to be too academic: “fun and challenging but mostly excruciatingly boring, difficult and useless,” she says. “I craved to be more creative and expressive, which is why I picked up the guitar. I couldn’t be “leftbrained” about it because I didn’t know how to use it. It really opened up me to song writing.” Solo or backed by a band, Chen can be heard along the West Coast as Yea-Ming and The Rumours. The first album from Yea-Ming and The Rumours, So, Bird​.​.​. was out in March 2022 and a new album, I Can’t Have It All will be out on Dandy Boy Records on May 24th.