Emma Ayz ('Eyes') Releases New Track 'Judy' From Upcoming EP

LA's Emma Ayz (pronounced "eyes") has recently announced her debut EP, "Animus," a dreamy, chamber-indie-folk gem out July 15th. Today, Emma releases the deeply personal track "Judy," along with accompanying video. "Judy" begins with a stark drone that dissipates into a lush elegy.

Here, Emma puts herself in the shoes of a friend grappling with lost time, after their mother quickly passes away. Emma says of the song's inspiration: "The line "I'll climb up this tree for Judy" is speaking to the seemingly insurmountable pain that comes with grieving a dear one you have lost. Having just witnessed my friend lose their mother, Judy, I saw first-hand how much courage it takes to climb that tree.

"Judy" is an ode to anyone who knows how sifting through memories can make you feel helpless, angry, wondrous; it's an illusive mind trick at times, fleeting and beautiful.We shot/performed this video in Cassidy's studio, where I recorded the song in early 2021. When my friend and director, Tess Lafia, said she felt it was important for people to see me sing this song, I knew I wanted it to be shot where I made it. It features me, Melody Ector on keys, and Cassidy Turbin on drums (who also engineered/produced this EP with me)."

"I wanted to get messy with this process," says Emma Ayz, the iridescent folk-pop empath who's already opened for Meernaa, Gillian Frances, No Swoon, and Bunny Lowe. "I was going through the biggest changes of my life, and the world was actually on fire. What got me through it was focusing on other things." What's the opposite of fear? For Emma, it was embracing the unknown.

That expanse of possibility begat her debut, Animus, an EP that's a nod to both Jungian psychology and the spirit of rebellion. (She's currently working on a full length, produced by Luke Temple, that will follow later this year.) Gently oscillating between angst and resolve, "It's about learning to accept myself, to feel pain, to acknowledge all the mistakes I've made, that we're all beautiful messes," she notes. "This is me being really vulnerable and honest."

Word gets around, and fellow musicians have taken notice. Guitarist Dylan Day (Jenny Lewis, Ethan Gruska, Nick Hakim), bassist Daniel Rhine (Madison Cunningham, Phoebe Bridgers), and engineer/co-producer Cassidy Turbin (Beck) all contributed to her EP.

And at various times, her live band has included guitarist Greg Uhlmann (Perfume Genius), drummer Sam Kauffman-Skloff (Angel Olsen), drummer Jorge Balbi (Sharon Van Etten), and bassist Pat Kelly (Perfume Genius). Not bad for a breakthrough artist who wrote and produced the songs herself, starting with the lyrics first, alone in her bedroom.

Much of the magic of Animus-and of Emma Ayz-lies in how she's mastered the beauty of heartbreak. She grew up with a trans sibling who struggled with substance abuse. She suddenly lost a close family friend to pancreatic cancer. And despite coming-out as queer, she couldn't shake the sense of feeling lost. "For a long time, I was just functioning, going forward, not thinking about myself at all."

"During COVID, I got super into dream work, waking up each morning and writing about my dreams," says Emma, who's played the guitar since age 12, when she avidly studied Abbey Road. (She wrote her first song, about a dearly departed cat, just two years later.) At the start of the pandemic, Emma left New York City, miserable in her data-analyst job, to move-in with her mom in Los Angeles' Silver Lake neighborhood.

Soon, her company laid her off, freeing her up to work diligently on the music she always wanted to make-funded, somewhat ironically, by unemployment checks. A turning point for Emma, who subsequently surmounted her own eating disorder, came when her mother gave her a copy of the seminal feminist book Women Who Run With the Wolves.

It references the Jungian concept of animus, "this subconscious energy, a masculine counterpart of femininity. It's about living in a place of balance, complete harmony with both your masculine and feminine sides," she explains. "That process reclaimed my femininity from archetypes. For the first time I felt proud of who I was."

This was the inspiration she needed. "I started really working on myself. Now I have an insane morning routine of meditation, movement of my body, and deep gratitude," she says. "At the same time, I started to grieve a lot of the things that I had sort of pushed down. I guess I was grieving the person who I was before."

Watch the new music video here:

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