Yel Is Turning Her Best Memories Into Works of Art

The California-based singer-songwriter makes dreamy, romantic music that is becoming a smash hit on streaming services.

The morning after Yel’s formal was a dreamy haze.

It had been a magical night and as Yel, who friends call by her first name Yerin, laid around at home that morning, she scrolled through social media watching Instagram stories and liking posts from her friends. Everyone, she noticed, was using the phrase “about last night” as they shared their photos of the night. “That hooked my attention,” Yel told me from the heart of Seoul a few days before Christmas.

Yel had already been writing lyrics as a hobby, so what came next happened naturally. “I had some unforgettable moments, so I wanted to use my music to document that moment forever,” she said. 

Though this would be her first EP, Yel had already released some music to her SoundCloud. Her first single on the platform “Eternal”, which she pulled recently for use on her debut album, contains the same thoughtful, elegant lyrics that she writes now. On Zoom, she read her favorite line to me from the song, “All the love I poured for the wrong people/ I will give them to you/ All of my sides I showed to the wrong people/ I will show them to you.” 

More than just being a songwriter, Yel is a poet. She collects stories and memories then weaves them together into her lush landscape of music. On my favorite track, “0214” (referencing Valentine’s Day) Yel sings almost conversationally about a boy she’s fallen for. “Is it true? All those things you said about me?” she asks tentatively. “No one told me you weren’t the boy I thought you were.” The feelings are “uncontrollable”; the love she feels is overwhelming. 

“About Last Night…” was released in 2022 after Yel arrived in California, but it’s just now beginning to find traction with over 3 million combined streams. Yel sees why her music appeals to listeners. “I write my music from personal experiences. The experiences I’m going through right now as a college student and as a young girl in her twenties are experiences and memories that are very relatable to other people,” she said. Plus, she added with a knowing smile, “I’m not going through any world record events.” 

She was a playful, adventurous child.

The memories kick in the most for Yel when her family moved to Singapore from Korea when she was in kindergarten. In the island country of Southeast Asia, Yel remembers catching frogs and lizards with friends. “I’d place them in plastic containers and watch them for a few hours then set them free,” she told me. Then she laughed, “I don’t know how I did that because now I can’t even look at them.” 

Yel’s childhood was carefree: she played ding dong ditch with her neighborhood friends. She took modern dance classes and learned gymnastics. Often she’d do somersaults across her family’s front lawn. “I loved gymnastics and dancing,” she said. Music was always there, too, like a mysterious friend who fascinated Yel. At home, she’d binge YouTube videos of singers performing classic pop songs and cry. Sometimes in high school or middle school, she’d also perform at talent shows. The dilemma she faced, Yel said, “was more whether I had the courage to admit that I was interested and serious about music.” 

When she first began writing lyrics and recording herself, Yel had a hard time with friends or family calling her an artist. “I didn’t think I was so talented or unusual with what I was doing,” she reflected. But her perspective has shifted over the years. “As the more time passes and the more music I work on, I realized that this is something that not everyone can do because this just comes out naturally when you have that type of emotion.” 

I first discovered Yel’s music through G. Nine, an R&B singer from Korea who collaborated with Yel on his EP “closure”. G. sees clearly what makes Yel’s music exceptional. “I discovered that Yel was incredibly underrated despite her immense talent. She was on a similar level as me, still striving to make her mark in the industry,” he told me. 

“What instantly captivated me was the sheer uniqueness of Yel's voice. It had a charming quality that set her apart from every other female artist I had come across,” he explained “Not only did she possess this one-of-a-kind vocal tone, but her songs also gave off a remarkable level of professionalism and artistry. Unlike some artists who sounded amature-like and lacking emotion, Yel's delivery had an organic and heartfelt quality that resonated with me.”

It’s true. What comes across most clearly in Yel’s music is her emotions: her desires for romance, the self-love she shows herself, her kindness, and sometimes her propensity to overthink a situation. “I think Yerin can be perceived as shy at first but she’s really just observing and doesn’t mind not talking sometimes,” said Yel’s best friend Alie. “She treats herself well,” she added, “and I respect that.” 

“Ever since I was a kid, a lot of people told me that I can’t hide my expressions or feelings,” Yel conceded. “I don’t mean it to come off in a rude way, but sometimes I catch myself making expressions or expressing myself with words and I think sometimes people see me as rude.” But what this really means is that Yel knows herself, and she isn’t trying to be anyone but herself. 

Yerin is enchanted by chance encounters. In some of her favorite films like “Before Sunrise”, two Americans meet on a train to Vienna and discover a connection between each other, or in Sofia Coppola’s masterpiece “Lost in Translation”, two lonely Americans meet in Tokyo and take in the strange sights together. These stories of strangers who find solace in each other’s company speak to Yel: Her love of romance, her interest in understanding others, her draw to a life of adventure.

When she watched “Lost in Translation” this year, she was surprised by how much the movie made her cry. “I knew I had to connect it to my current single ‘Found You’,” she said. When she created the lyric video, she collaged scenes together from the film. Yel’s music and imagery is largely influenced by auteur filmmakers, like Coppola or Wong Kar-wai’s ravishing “In the Mood For Love''. I see Coppolla’s work the most in Yel’s feminine, dreamy aesthetics. Perhaps more subtly, both women create serene works of art that have a knotted tension underlying them.

In her latest EP “Tokyo Express”, Yel uses an audio clip from “Before Sunrise” to open the sublime track “Sunshine”. The song sets in motion a storyline about two strangers who meet on the Tokyo Express. On the final title track, a voice in Japanese ends their journey together. “This stop ends in Tokyo. This is the Tokyo Express.” Yel explained, “This indicates the end of the album and the story of two lovers.”

Yel prefers to work in paradoxes like this, perhaps a trait she picked up from the filmmakers she admires. While her music might seem upbeat, cheerful even, look closer and you’ll notice notes of sadness. “In my most recent single ‘Found You’, it’s a song about finding someone who understands or tries to understand you,” she said as an example. “But there’s a slight twist near the end of the song.” The narrator confesses that she can’t embrace the love because she still feels loneliness, so it’s best for them to go their separate ways.

These paradoxes extend to the album art too: While the music of “About Last Night” is about falling for someone, the cover feels wistful. Yel sits at a restaurant alone, surrounded by food, as she stares out the window reminiscing. And while Yel envisioned “Tokyo Express” as a spring album with lush mint blues and ruby reds on the album art, the songs are tinged with sadness. 

“We humans are constantly experiencing new things that put us on a rollercoaster of emotions. I don’t feel like it’s possible to feel one emotion 100% at a time. It’s not really realistic,” she said. “Even when I’m feeling excited or happy there's still a tiny part of anxiety or unhappiness.” 

Often before she begins recording, Yel creates mood boards for the vibe she wants her music to have. “I enjoy journaling so I write down what I’m feeling or anything I think I can use as lyrics,” she said. “It’s pretty easy for me to figure out how I want to portray or deliver my intentions for a song.” 

She creates the majority of her music alone. “I think because I started as a very independent artist, I was so used to working on everything alone,” she said. It’s stressful for her to convey exactly what she wants to someone because often those thoughts are based on intensely personal feelings. “It’s been hard to find someone who gets my vision so I feel more comfortable working alone,” she said. 

But for G., the musician who she collaborated with for “eventually”, Yel’s ability to capture exactly what he wanted in the music was a huge point of admiration for him. “Yel has an intuitive grasp of my musical direction, and that synergy is invaluable in creating something special,” G. explained. “Another aspect that I love and aspire about Yel is her flawless versatility. While her main genre leans towards alt pop, she showed exceptional talent in other genres as well. It's remarkable to witness how she effortlessly transitioned into the R&B genre and absolutely nailed it. Her adaptability and skill across different styles of music inspire me greatly.” 

“Yerin is a chill baddie,” Alie said recently. This description made Yel laugh, but it fits. She doesn’t let a lot get to her, and as her music started to blow up on TikTok she handled the success with a mixture of gratefulness and intrigue. 

“I was always a confident kid growing up. And I heard from a lot of people that I seem very stable and have a high self esteem, which is true,” she said to me. “But when it came to music I became so introverted and a whole different person. I wasn’t always confident about putting stuff out there on social media as an artist.” 

Making short TikTok clips was intimidating for Yel, but she decided to take “baby steps” to see where it would take her. She only made videos that featured her lyrics or Yel at home, but the music began to gain traction. Fans from across the world began to message Yel to say that discovering her music was the best thing they’ve ever done. By July, the EP’s title track was becoming an underground smash. 

It’s easy for me to see why: I love the lyrics of “About Last Night…”. “I took your arm, it might not be the biggest but I feel the safest when I’m with you,” she sings in one of the most poignantly descriptive lines. It’s cinematic in parts, too. When Yel sings that they stayed up all night to talk about their favorite lines, she interjects audio of her exclaiming, “Wait, I love that song too!”

When I asked how she felt watching the streaming numbers run up, Yel was candid. “There were two emotions going on in me. Obviously I was so grateful and felt like I was dreaming because I was getting the attention from people about my music,” she said. “But as much as I was going through that, another part of me was like ‘Ugh, finally people are discovering my music’.”

And that’s because as nervous as Yel was to call herself an artist, she’s always known that her music could mean something to listeners. Hearing firsthand how much listeners love her music validated a feeling Yel had been carrying for years, even if she was too self-conscious to vocalize it at first.  “I’ve always had this certainty or assurance of myself when making music. It was hard to admit until getting a reaction from people,” she said. 

It’s difficult to be an artist who works in isolation, only really sharing what you’re doing with a few close friends. But as more people are seeing that Yel is one to watch, she’s become more confident that, yes, she was always right. She is unique. Her lyrics and music do matter greatly. Her EPs soundtrack our late nights as we wait for that text back or for our lover to come over. Yel’s music is the song playing as we walk to school as the cherry blossoms fall around us or as we cry alone in our bedroom. What makes her such a special artist is that her music is timeless. No matter how old you are, her songs will bring you back to the first moment you fell in love or the first time your crush came over. She sounds effortless in her delivery, even if Yel has placed a lot of thought behind each project. 

“I don’t think I have any expectations for my listeners because everyone thinks and feels different,” she told me as she thought about the past year. “But as long as my audience feels something from the music that only I can make as an artist, then I’ll be more than happy.”