The Giver

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Photos by Kevin Sinclair

UMI is a giver. With her new album, People Stories (Epic, 2025), the musician provides a salve for the world. She knows that these are challenging times, but with her sunny songs, she’s letting some light in. As Mos Def sang on the track that bears her name, “Umi said shine your light on the world/Shine your light for the world to see,” and that’s precisely what UMI does. As it happens, UMI was born the same year Mos Def released “UMI Says,” у 1999, and it’s almost as if she were predestined to become a musician.

“I’ve been singing always,” кажа яна. “It was my form of playing.” While some children played with dolls, as UMI (born Tierra Umi Wilson in Seattle) says, she was playing with microphones and instruments. “It’s always kind of always been in me, and I’ve been writing songs since I was six. I played piano, played guitar,” - тлумачыць яна. “I got to this point where I was like, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do.'”

In Japanese, the word, “umi,” means, “ocean,” and like a tidal wave, UMI continued on her musical journey with full force. Soaking up an array of influences, from Sade to Frank Ocean, the singer began uploading her own songs to SoundCloud while still in college and maintained an intuitive approach to the songwriting process. “I make music both for myself and for others,” кажа яна. “I’m a very visual and sensory person so, when I make a song, I see it in colors. I see emotions as colors, memories as colors, and sounds as colors so, when I make music or the emotions that I want to express, I want to make sure the sounds are matching the feeling, which is why I feel my music is so wide and has the types of sounds that I use because it’s more about matching the right emotion to the sound. When I do that, it’s really for my own expression and my ability to accurately express that, but then also for people to feel their own specific feelings and emotions can be related to and understood.”

As UMI continues, she enjoys making music that “is like medicine,” believing that “music has the power to influence and shift who you are in the same way food does, or the things that you watch do. So when I go to the studio, I really want to make sure that, when I’m singing on the mic, I’m really expressing myself from a very pure place so that, when people hear it, they get to access a very pure feeling, whether they realize it or not.” She makes music “for people so that they have a place to go to that’s just very pure, very light, and loving.”

UMI’s selfless artistry is on full display on People Stories. Her second album (after a string of EPs and her 2022 debut, Forest in the City), People Stories radiates UMI’s positivity with its warm vocals and instrumentation. On the opener, “Часам,” after some gentle guitar ripples, UMI sings in her honeyed falsetto, “Some people search,/Some people find,/Happiness grows inside,/Looked in the ocean,/Drowned in the sea,/Hoping to find in me,/What is happiness?” Fearlessly, UMI looks inwards and asks hard questions in order to resonate with listeners.

On “Часам,” she even asks her therapist, “Why is it okay for me to be happy if the world isn’t happy?” A guide on UMI’s quest for inner peace throughout the album, her therapist answers, “That is such a deep one, and I love that question because here is what we need to recognize: number one, the responsibility of one person at a time, and each individual is only responsible for their own happiness.” Yet UMI does care for the well-being of others. While she knows she may not be responsible for their happiness, she still strives to bring joy into their lives. All of People Stories, у рэчаіснасці, with UMI’s uplifting words set to bright pop, is a balm for listeners.

UMI even conceived the album as a tribute to her fans. After one fan approached her with her boyfriend during a previous tour and rallied her to a Thai restaurant to try mango sticky rice with them, she realized that she wanted to make a record for her supporters. “It clicked. Я быў падобны, ‘I want to write an album about the story of my fans.'” People Stories is one of the most unabashedly joyous albums in recent memory. It’s a celebration of resilience, of the uniquely human ability to transcend pain and attain peace. As UMI sings on, “Mango Sticky Rice,” “It’s up to you,/It’s what you wanna do,” handing the mic over to her fans, letting them ride the wave.