Yaeji Lets Loose

The musician-slash-DJ is known for introspective dance music that brings the house down. On her debut album, she went searching for herself.

- E. Alex Jung

IN YAEJI'S HOME, everything has its place. We've arrived at her Brooklyn pad, a pretty big-for-New York two-bedroom apartment, where she's cutting up kimchee with pink scissors (labeled FOR FOOD USE ONLY) to go with the congee we bought for lunch. We spent the morning attempting to tire out her toy poodle, Jiji, a pandemic puppy she got in Korea, but succeeded only in making ourselves hungry. Jiji is her little princess, a spoiled international rich girl, and the main reason you might not see her at the Bushwick clubs where Kathy Yaeji Lee from Flushing became mononymously known as Yaeji, the musician beloved for her introspective dance music that sounds like the moment when the molly is about to hit. (She's pretty straight edge, though.) Motherhood at 29 years old and a liberatory new album allow her to indulge her inner homebody and call it a night: Sorry! Dog!

Much like Yaeji herself, who is dressed with an eye toward stylish comfort-furlined black Crocs, jeans, a hiking jacketobjects with radioactive levels of cuteness are everywhere around us: A large beige sectional that looks like a row of wrinkled ladyfingers surrounds a yellow puddle shaped coffee table in the living room, where there is also a red mushroom lamp; a Totoro noren hangs at the threshold of her bedroom, and plushies line the windowsill. Yaeji comes from a family of collectors and believes in the mysticism of objects. She carries a coin wallet in her backpack that holds a miniature owl and a turtle made of seashells wearing a pink hat. She keeps it with her because her grandfather gave it to her as a safety charm. "It literally functions as nothing, but I carry it around with me," she says. "I have a hard time letting go."