Nothing is as wistful as time passing. But maybe time, as a tool of measurement, is as irrelevant as a teaspoon when speaking in terms of the heart. Perhaps it best to measure life not by the hour or second, but with how many selves we’ve outgrown. Because isn’t that what life is about? To be tangled in the choices made, places touched, and people felt, each leaving behind an inaudible imprint, gently shaping the way we move through the world and the way we become ourselves again and again? In the next iteration of herself, Long Beach musician Emily Yacina transcends the tendrils of presence, loss, and curiosity by channeling and sitting with these depths to begin coloring in their elusive meanings through her sophomore offering, Veilfall. 

Six years after her debut studio album, Veilfall is a diaristic and deeply felt attempt to give shape to the formless, tracing the emotional outlines of experiences that resist easy definition. Co-produced with Florist’s Jonnie Baker, Veilfall unfolds through earnest, confessional fragments, delivered with a weightless cadence and interlaced with tender, deliberately shy synths—constructing soundscapes that feel at once intimate and expansive. Within these delicate arrangements, a quiet emotional architecture takes form, where the ache of longing meets intentional restraint. There’s an innocence that lingers here, as we listen for her quiet astonishments of becoming.

In her single, “The Clearing,” clarity arrives in the stillness after time has worn down the sharp edges of what once hurt. And yet, Yacina doesn’t shy away from the darkness or the difficult truths, probes deeper even if it means reopening what might have now closed.

Ultimately, even after time, some things don’t always make sense—but they do settle, and in that settling, we learn to breathe again. 

See here, musician Emily Yacina move gently forward through the clearing. 

Your release comes with space and time in between them, so I wanted to ask what do those in between times mean for you creatively? 

I think of it as like the research era. Like there just needs to be life happening, whether that be like a new environment or new people, new relationships, and things to learn. I’’m just researching and taking it in. There has to be a good amount of that before I feel like I can write something cohesive. 

Do you think of each project as a bookmark in time? It also almost sounds like an anticapitalistic approach, when everything is about release, release, release, you instead only release when you think it's right. 

It takes me a long time, which I used to sort of feel a little insecure about, I guess. But now I know that the songs that are on this record wouldn't exist if it weren't for all that research time, you know? And meeting the people who influenced the songs, and that’s just how it's supposed to be, I think.  I'm gonna turn 30 in January, and it is really surreal just how fast time seems to be going by.

Time does go by really fast, and I don't know if that's good or bad. 

Me either. I also have a lot of children in my life here. It just really shows you the passage of time in a really intense way. And I am inspired by the play aspect [of youth] and getting obsessed with something and then riding it out as far as it can go. It is all about respecting the different things that come up along the way in the creative process and being like, ‘Oh, this might not be something that I wanna chase right away,’ but still getting obsessed with it anyway, just out of pure curiosity and wanting to explore whatever it is.

You've been releasing music for over a decade and now looking back, what feels the most precious about the path that you've taken so far? 

It is really cool to have all of the older songs exist like what you were saying, like bookmarks, markers of time and different chapters, and working with different people. Sometimes listening to older songs can be uncomfortable because you don't like the way that they sound anymore. But, it's still really cool that they exist. I think about my friend, Eric, who passed away in 2021, but he produced my first studio record. He made his own music too, and just to have that music exist and to be able to listen to it and think about him and reference the time that we had together, feels very sacred.

Your new album, what does the word, ‘veilfall,’ mean to you in the context of your record? 

The record has a lot to do with relationships. I was sort of exploring my avoidant tendencies a lot. This record is asking why I have these tendencies—to kind of push away the fear of intimacy and getting close to people. Even though that's something that really draws me in, and something I put so much emphasis on. I feel like we learn so much when we’re really letting ourselves be seen by someone else, and having them reflect back to you—who you are, where you are, how you’ve changed and grown. And it’s so sacred, yet so scary. So I think that tension was really in my being while I was making a lot of these songs. I was sort of just wondering—clearly, this is such an important part of life, letting people see you, intimacy. It takes you somewhere you can’t really get to otherwise, without really laying yourself bare. And yet, it’s so scary. I definitely have tendencies to want to push it away. So that’s what Veilfall sort of means to me—just letting it fall. Letting yourself be seen, despite how scary that can feel, for whatever reason.

Veilfall has an amazing quality of holding opposites, in terms of connection but also lost, and presence and absence. I don't know. How do you navigate holding like both sides in your music?

Yes, holding both sides. I feel so inspired by presence, and the second song that's coming out is called “The Clearing.” I feel like the symbol of the record is like an arc where you're being taken to a place that you can't be taken to unless it's with another person. I'm really interested in presence, but also there's a lot of discomfort that comes along with that. There are some songs that I feel are a little bit more emotionally detached, where I have my walls up a bit more—but I’m aware of it. And then there are some songs where I’m sort of allowing myself to be in the clearing.

I feel like a lot of my experiences with grief early on have informed this approach—and the fear, I guess, around vulnerability. That really came up a lot while I was writing these songs. I'm like, ‘Why do I feel this way? Like, why is it so scary?’ And I think just like losing people who you're really close to, like that, it all of a sudden becomes a possibility and a very real thing. So I think that has a lot to do with it, like my attachment. 

What drew you to opening that door rather than keeping it closed?

I think despite it being scary, it's such an important thing. It's how we grow. I host these meetups at my friend's event space in LA; they're called Death Cafes. And basically a bunch of strangers come and talk about their experiences with grief. The cool thing about it is that there's always overlap in what people are experiencing, so you can't avoid the connection. In a lot of ways, I think that's kind of the point is, connecting. Like what else is there? But something that we talk about in the Death Cafes a lot is just the randomness of like us all being here at this specific time and sort of the meaning of that, just the chance that we are even here at all. And then like our friends and loved ones are here at the same time. What else is there in life than these connections and the people that we meet who also happen to be here. 

I think all of this can feel so dire, yet you're so light to talk to and you're so smiley, I guess I want to ask how–like what keeps you going? 

I would just say curiosity. Like what's going to happen tomorrow? 

Now looking back, what is it like hearing your older songs, and how did you know that they were finished and ready?
That's a great question because some of them developed more naturally and quickly and came to me pretty easily, and I knew intuitively what had to happen and what had to be added. But then there are a few songs that really evolved a bunch, like I’m thinking of “WIP,” which at the beginning was way more acoustic sounding and had a classic arrangement style. Iit was never even like an intention to be like, ‘It's gonna go from this to this.’ It just became like, ‘Okay, what if we did this,’ and truly just like following the intuition and then letting it evolve to be exactly what it is. Which is also funny because like that's sort of like what that song is about. Eventually we built them up enough and we honored their evolution enough where we finally got to a state where we were like, ‘Yeah,’ and that was it.

What do you hope people  take home with them when they listen to the album?

I hope that they can resonate in whatever way makes sense to them. And that I'm hoping that if people have experienced anything similar, that they can feel a little more connected and a little less alone and feel, like I don't know, that their experience is real.

Do you think, or do you think of this album as like a closing chapter or at the beginning of a new one?

In a way it does feel like an end, but also a beginning to something else that I don't know yet. But yeah, I definitely like it. I feel like it really encapsulates my time that I've lived in Long Beach and like the people that I've met. I don't know if it's the end or the beginning, but it definitely feels like some sort of marker. 

I guess it end or beginning, it doesn't matter as long as it's forward. What gives you hope right now?

It’s kind of like a bleak time. It’s crazy how insane everything is, so I tend to, whenever I feel overwhelmed by the state of everything, really try to zoom in on my immediate community and focus on things I feel like I have more control over. If somebody I love is doing something cool, I’m like, that’s awesome—someone I care about is having fun and growing.

My friend called me the other day because she was driving, she also lives upstate, and unfortunately hit a little bird. It was like a little goldfinch. There were two of them crossing the road, and she saw them but it was too late. She got out of her car and was really affected by this little thing dying and feeling responsible for it. She had this sort of ceremony and she went to this nature area and ended up burying the bird with a feather she had in her car from a chicken she once had that also died. Totally thoughtful. As we talked on the phone, we were both crying, talking about the loss of innocence, or something like that. That moment made me feel hopeful in the way that we were really just seeing each other. She was clearly affected by this, and I could understand and be there with her at that moment.We both saw it as this big thing that happened in her life, in her day. The beauty of connection, I guess, and being understood.

And lastly, how do you keep your heart open? 

Oh my gosh, how do I keep my heart open? I guess remembering that I don't know it all, and that who knows what is to come and what experiences await. I guess keep your heart open? That's such a good question at the end of this too, because I feel like I have been just battling that for so long. Just like the beauty of the unknown, I guess. Like even just this record, I feel like all of the people I met happened so randomly. Like I just like moved here because of a family I babysit for and then I met all of these people who impacted me in this huge way, and I would've never expected that. And so I think just like continuing along and remembering that we don't know what the future holds and just to be like present for that, I guess.