Natalie Lew AKA: Sea Lemon creates a unique style of dream pop, accompanied by her unique vocal tones. The Seattle artist’s new EP, Stop At Nothing, announced today, will arrive on August 25 on Luminelle Recordings. Lew’s latest single, “Vaporized,” is a springy and uptempo number, accompanied by a video, filmed around Seattle, directed by Otium + Lew herself. The track follows recently-released shoegazey single, “Cellar.”

On the track, Lew offers: “”Vaporized” was the first song I wrote that I knew specifically would be for the new EP. The song is all about my personal health anxieties and fear of death, which is something I’ve dealt with since I was little. The chorus’ “I thought he was buried alive/out of my mind/I thought she was vaporized/out of my mind” is playing on the most unlikely, almost impossible ways to die because I think making light of my personal anxieties can help me from spiraling. I have insomnia a lot and wake up in the middle of the night, and used to have this tendency to read headlines while I was awake (a terrible idea), wondering if some horrible accident might happen to me too. The song instrumentally gets a little heavier and more intense each chorus, which implies this impending doom feeling that gets worse and worse as I worry.”

On the video: “Alex (Otium) and I shot the video over a weekend in Seattle this summer. In the video, I’m playing two characters—an unknowing protagonist that’s been allured to dark magic, and the allurer, who is this mysterious other character in a nightgown, red gloves and a mask. The song and video as a whole are meant to represent how uncomfortable it is confronting one’s fear of the unknown, and the video pulls on these classic, campy thriller movie tropes that remind me of being a kid and watching the old VHS player in my playroom. I wanted to step out of my own comfort zone with this video, and do something a little more conceptual and weirder that felt like an honest depiction of Vaporized core themes.”

All her life, Natalie Lew had been a music fan, but she never envisioned herself gracing the stage as a musician. Growing up in Seattle, Lew was raised on local cultural touchstones like the Capitol Hill Block Party, KEXP, and the Museum of Pop Culture’s annual Sound Off (Battle of the Bands), which led her to believe she’d pursue a career working for a label, maybe as an A&R rep, anything to keep in close proximity with the thing she loved most. Though Lew grew up playing the piano, that was the extent of her musical prowess, at least until she moved to New York and started playing a roommate’s guitars, which led to playing rhythm guitar in a friend’s band. The experience opened up a new future for Lew who returned to the Pacific Northwest in the early days of the pandemic and, in isolation, wrote her very first songs which were released as an EP, Close Up, in 2022 under the moniker Sea Lemon.

Stop at Nothing influenced by authors like Ottessa Moshfegh, whose complicated, if unlikable, female characters go to extreme lengths to satisfy a dull ache at the center of their existence. Her noirish approach to fiction can be heard on “Dramatic,” a parodic song Lew wrote about parasocial relationships developing between regular people and celebrity influencers. Plan a vacation to another country/ Saw you were there maybe a month ago,” Lew sings to a social media scion. “Land into town I doubt it ever hits me/ Get in the pool, it’s like that episode.” Instrumentally, it’s the heaviest track on the EP, and its clarity of vision positions Sea Lemon alongside contemporary storytellers like Japanese Breakfast, whose ever-rising profile as a fellow Asian-American indie pop artist has boosted Lew’s confidence in her ability to tell stories that feel at once singular and relatable to a wider audience.

Sea Lemon
Stop At Nothing
Tracklisting
Luminelle Recordings

1) Vaporized
2) Breakdown
3) Cellar
4) 3A
5) Dramatic

Sea Lemon 2023 Live Live Dates

July 21, 2023 – Seattle, WA @ Capitol Hill Block Party
August 12, 2023 – Seattle, WA @ Day In Day Out (DJ SET)
August 28, 2023 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios w/ Hatchie
August 30, 2023 – San Francisco, CA @ Cafe Du Nord w/ Hatchie
August 31, 2023 – Ventura, CA @ Ventura Music Hall w/ Hatchie
September 1, 2023 – West Hollywood, CA @ Troubadour w/ Hatchie
September 9, 2023 – Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern (Release Show)

Pre-order Stop At Nothing by Sea Lemon HERE