Lee Emi – the solo project of The Crane Wives’ Emilee Petersmark – confronts the seductive urge to start over on “Clean Slate,” an emphatic, surging indie rock reckoning from her upcoming debut album ‘DESTROY EVERYTHING’ that reveals how the histories and past selves we try to outrun follow us into every new beginning.

Stream: “Clean Slate” – Lee Emi

Part of my deconstruction journey has been… realizing that adoption could not erase the Korean parts of me. No matter how badly you might want to start over, there will always be ghosts following you until you learn to embrace and integrate them.

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The dream of starting over is clean only from a distance.

Up close, it carries every mistake, every bruise, and every past version of ourselves we hoped the next town or name might erase. Singer/songwriter Lee Emi gives that restless fantasy a fierce, surging pulse on “Clean Slate,” confronting both the seductive promise of escape and the impossible truth beneath it: Wherever we go, we take ourselves with us. Every fresh beginning still carries the person who came before.

It’s a song about the desire to leave your damage behind – and self-reckoning at its most intimate and unavoidable.

There’s a tear in the canvas, darling
There’s a stitch missing from your sleeve
There’s a short in the circuit, darling
There’s a crack inside of me

And I’m thinking about,
thinking about, thinking about
Leaving in the night,
chasing that unholy dollar
Thinking about,
thinking about, thinking about
Cutting my hair, shedding my skin
Clean slate

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Clean Slate,” the emphatic second solo single from Lee Emi, the new solo project of The Crane Wives’ Emilee Petersmark. Arriving July 14 alongside a cinematic music video directed by Hwa-Jeen Na, the song coincides with the announcement of Lee Emi’s debut album, DESTROY EVERYTHING, out October 2 through Ermsauce, LLC. Following June’s searing introductory single “Black Hole,” “Clean Slate” pushes further into the darker, more electric world Petersmark is creating entirely on her own terms.

After 16 years as a founding member of The Crane Wives, Petersmark is using Lee Emi to take full command of the music, imagery, and atmosphere surrounding her songs. The name itself carries that intention: Born Lee Sang-Eun and renamed Emi-Lee after being adopted from South Korea and raised in Michigan, she reverses it here as an act of reclamation – honoring both her Korean roots and the person she became through her American upbringing. Written through the collapse of a long relationship, the isolation of the pandemic, a rare kidney disease diagnosis, and Petersmark’s own deepening connection to her heritage and cultural identity, DESTROY EVERYTHING channels years of upheaval into a visceral statement of rupture, reinvention, and self-definition.

That larger reckoning crystallizes on “Clean Slate,” where Petersmark pairs a muscular, ascending arrangement with the destabilizing impulse to abandon the life she has built.

The song reaches toward transformation while remaining painfully alert to the history embedded beneath it.

“‘Clean Slate’ is a song that deeply considers the option of giving up and starting over,” Petersmark tells Atwood Magazine. “It contemplates the point you reach after making more mistakes than you can fix, wondering if it’d be easier to seek out a new start rather than try to clean up your mess. The song also touches on what you bring with you when you start over, all the things you can’t run from.”

“Clean Slate” begins already damaged. There is a tear in the canvas, a stitch missing from a sleeve, a short in the circuit, and finally, most intimately, “a crack inside of me.” These aren’t images of sudden destruction so much as small failures in the structures meant to hold us together – the places where a life begins coming apart before anyone else can see it.

Call for tokens of worth, my darling,
Make them make you believe
Fill the chasm with spring and summer
And watch autumn leak out of me

I been thinking about, thinking about, thinking about
Testing out a prayer, seeking an outside opinion
Thinking about, thinking about, thinking about
Cutting my hair, cutting my hair, cutting my hair

A woody percussive pulse and rhythmic acoustic guitar initially keep the song tethered to Petersmark’s folk roots, but the arrangement soon grows heavier, crunchier, and increasingly urgent. Her repeated “thinking about” becomes an obsessive internal rhythm, as though the fantasy of escape is gathering force each time she names it: Leaving in the night. Heading for the coast. Cutting her hair. Shedding her skin.

These instincts began on paper. Petersmark remembers putting immense pressure on herself to be perfect as a child, throwing away drawings whenever a mistake could not be fully erased and beginning again on a clean page.

“Clean Slate” magnifies that impulse until it encompasses entire relationships, identities, and lives – all the failures too large to rub away with an eraser.

The song’s soaring central image captures the romance of that imagined rebirth:

I could rise like the sun on a new day
Turning my back on the moon
And the mess I’ve made
Clean slate

“I wish starting over were as easy as waking up and leaving yesterday behind you,” Petersmark shares. At her lowest, she would imagine getting into her car and driving until the old version of herself disappeared, building another life somewhere beyond the reach of her past. The fantasy points in two directions at once – toward a brighter future and away from everything she cannot bear to face.

But “Clean Slate” refuses to leave its narrator inside that dream. The song’s emotional center arrives when Petersmark strips away the destinations, disguises, and outside validation: “My heart is an empty cup / Nobody can fill it up.” Her voice is assertive, but the recognition underneath it aches. No prayer, relationship, thrill, or fresh beginning can do the internal work on her behalf.

I’m unmoored, I’m untied
I’m greedy, unsatisfied
My heart is an empty cup
Nobody can fill it up
My heart is an empty cup
Nobody, nobody can

Even rehabilitation becomes a question of faith. Petersmark pleads for someone to make her believe in “salvaging the broken pieces,” and that “the patches will hold long enough” for another beginning. The repetition hits with both desperation and defiance, turning the song into an argument between the person who wants to disappear and the person who knows repair may be the only way forward.

Make me believe,
make me believe, make me believe
In rehabilitation,
salvaging the broken pieces
Make me believe,
make me believe, make me believe
The patches will hold
long enough for me to start

The song’s Hwa-Jeen Na-directed music video takes that private conflict and places it within a larger inherited story.

Petersmark and Jeen-Na share roots in the Korean diaspora – Petersmark as a Korean adoptee raised in Michigan and Jeen-Na as a second-generation Korean immigrant who also grew up in the Midwest – and together, they use “Clean Slate” to interrogate the idea that leaving one country, culture, or identity behind can truly erase it.

“Adoption in particular often hinges on the misconception that an infant adopted before they’re a year old would carry less trauma from separation from their heritage, that babies present a ‘Clean Slate’ for adopters to imprint over,” Petersmark explains. “Part of my deconstruction journey has been unraveling that narrative, and realizing that adoption could not erase the Korean parts of me.”

The name Lee Emi has already made reclamation part of the project; the video extends that act into a haunting visual language. Its lingering ghosts give physical shape to everything “Clean Slate” understands cannot simply be abandoned – cultural inheritance, the trauma of separation, and every past self still moving beside her.

The song’s relationship with DESTROY EVERYTHING is equally charged. A clean slate suggests starting fresh; destroying everything demands that the existing structure be torn down first. Petersmark sees both impulses as forms of cathartic wishful thinking – seductive reactions to a life that feels too damaged, uncomfortable, or complicated to repair.

That is the force behind “Clean Slate”: It lets the fantasy of reinvention blaze at full volume without mistaking erasure for growth.

Lee Emi does not condemn the impulse to run; she understands exactly why it calls so powerfully. Yet beneath the cutting hair, shedding skin, and visions of the open road lies a harder, more enduring possibility – not beginning again as someone else, but using every mistake and misstep to build a life worth staying for.

DESTROY EVERYTHING arrives October 2^nd. Watch the music video for “Clean Slate” exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and dive into our conversation with Lee Emi below as she opens up about taking full creative control, reclaiming her Korean roots, and learning why a new beginning does not have to mean leaving yourself behind.

Thinking about, thinking about, thinking about
Heading for the coast, looking for a thrill that sticks
I’m thinking about, thinking about, thinking about
Cutting my hair, shedding my skin,
cutting my hair, cutting my hair,
cutting my hair, cutting my hair

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:: stream/purchase Clean Slate here ::

:: connect with Lee Emi here ::

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Stream: “Clean Slate” – Lee Emi

A CONVERSATION WITH LEE EMI

Lee Emi (Emilee Petersmark): Hello! Thank you for the interview! I’m excited to share this music, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to chat about it. For anyone new to my music, I’m Emi. I’ve been a full-time touring artist and freelance visual artist for the past 16 years. This is my first solo endeavor, and it’s been a terrifying thrill to have full creative control over the vision of this record and the world it lives in. I’m using this project as a vehicle to stretch my songwriting abilities, share my visual art, and explore my cultural roots.

Lee Emi: I’m a part of the Korean diaspora, one of 250k children that were adopted out of the country since the Korean War. I was originally named Lee Sang-Eun. My adoptive parents felt it was important for me to keep my Korean surname, Lee, so when I was adopted and naturalized they renamed me Emi-Lee. Over the past 6 years, I’ve been deconstructing what it means to be a Korean adoptee– I’ve returned to Korea for the first time since I was an infant, walked the wall built around city where I was born (Suwon City, just outside of Seoul), tracked down monuments from photos of my foster parents, and have been learning how to connect with this part of me that I’ve been afraid to look directly at for the majority of my life. Lee Emi is a way of reclaiming my birth name while still acknowledging the person I’ve become through adoption, and through my American upbringing.

Lee Emi: “Black Hole” is a confession that’s lived in me for a long time, and it was incredibly cathartic to send it out into the world and finally share it with others. It’s a song that lays bare a lot of insecurity that I’ve carried for years, and possesses a grit I always wished I could incorporate more into my work with the Crane Wives. Releasing it first felt like putting the scariest parts of me under a spotlight, and feeling like if folks accepted it, I’d have nothing left to lose. The reception has been incredible, and I’m extremely grateful to everyone who has listened to it.​

Lee Emi: The Crane Wives is a baby that I’ve shared with 3 other creatives for the last 16 years. We’ve worked really hard to keep the creative input as equal as we can, allowing songwriters to have the final veto on any production decision, but ultimately making sure that everyone contributes. Lee Emi is the first project where I’ve been completely in the driver’s seat, guiding where the song goes. I can lean hard into the sounds and feelings that hit me hardest and incorporate my most personal pieces of visual art. To me, this project demonstrates the ways that I’ve grown both in and out of the Crane Wives, presenting a (hopefully) more mature and focused vision that is both audible and visual.

Lee Emi: When I was a little kid, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect. When learning how to draw, if I made a mistake that wouldn’t erase completely, I’d throw the whole drawing away and start over on a new, clean page (I used to waste a lot of paper. Sorry, trees!). “Clean Slate” is about all of those times I wished I could start over with bigger parts of my life– to forget that last failed relationship. To erase those things I did that I’m ashamed of. To start over in a brand new place with a brand new life. Unfortunately, all those messy moments and mistakes are a part of what make us who we are. We can try to leave them behind, but they follow us because they’re a part of us. No matter where you go, there you are. “Clean Slate” is about wishing that weren’t the case, but knowing deep down that you can’t escape yourself.

Lee Emi: Thank you! I’m proud of that line.

I really wanted that moment to emphasize the romanticized vision of a new start. I wish starting over were as easy as waking up and leaving yesterday behind you. At my lowest moments I used to dream of just getting in my car and driving until the old me disappeared, starting over with a new name and no past and making a brand new life out of nothing. It’s a dream that I think a lot of people have at one point, something that drives people across oceans to new countries. I think in those moments we feel like we’re running towards a new future instead of running away from something. I wanted that line to hold both of those perspectives– running towards something better, and away from the all the things you f***ed up.

Lee Emi: I felt it was important to touch on the idea that fulfilment isn’t something someone else can make happen for you. I think it’s natural to seek outside validation when you’re feeling low, but ultimately the healthiest change and growth come from within.

Lee Emi: The video for “Clean Slate” was written and directed by Hwa-Jeen Na, a friend of mine who happens to be a second generation Korean immigrant who also grew up in the Midwest. We both decided that a big part of the narrative of this video should focus on our shared experience of being part of the diaspora. I think a lot of immigrants and adoptees were given the impression that coming to the USA would present a fresh start. Adoption in particular often hinges on the misconception that an infant adopted before they’re a year old would carry less trauma from separation from their heritage, that babies present a “Clean Slate” for adopters to imprint over. Part of my deconstruction journey has been unraveling that narrative, and realizing that adoption could not erase the Korean parts of me. This video shows that no matter how badly you might want to start over, there will always be ghosts following you until you learn to embrace and integrate them.

Lee Emi: “Clean Slate” felt like an appropriate bridge between my songwriting for The Crane Wives and Lee Emi. There’s a folky-ness in the acoustic rhythm guitar and the woody, almost ham-boning percussion at the beginning, but the song builds in a very electric, crunchy way that soon brings you out of the folk world.

Lee Emi: I think both “Clean Slate” and “Destroy Everything” explore the different ways a person can try to escape when they feel like something isn’t right in their life. Both are ultimately songs about catharsis and wishful thinking. When we make mistakes, it’s easy to yearn for a clean slate. When the life you’ve built feels uncomfortable, it’s easier to destroy everything, to tear it down rather than to repair it. Neither one of those options is healthy or helps you grow, but they feel damn good to dream about when we’re feeling stuck. I really love how these two concepts work together in a toxic way.

Lee Emi: I really hope listeners feel understood when they hear this song, and know they aren’t alone when they have those wild impulses to just flip the game board and start over when you realize you’re losing. Building this song and putting it out there has felt a lot like trying to figure out who I want to be moving forward, not necessarily starting over, but using the mistakes and missteps I’ve made in the past to build something more solid and worth sticking around for.

Lee Emi: One of my favorite songwriters, Morgan Haner, just released a single called “Dangerous Man” that has been resonating deeply with me. I’ve also been really into Korean indie music, and lately I’ve been hitting the album Gongbu by Balming Tiger really hard.

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:: stream/purchase Clean Slate here ::

:: connect with Lee Emi here ::

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Stream: “Clean Slate” – Lee Emi

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