AYA YVES RETURNS WITH HEARTFELT AND VULNERABLE ODE: ‘DEAR E’
Aya Yves has followed up her girl-power smash “Smart Girls” with a brand new single, “Dear E.”. Co-written with LANKS, the track is an intensely personal ode to Aya’s family, showcasing an entirely new side to the dark-pop artist we have come to know throughout 2020.
Dealing with poignant issues of addiction, loss and family ties, “Dear E.” is a gorgeously layered pop ballad that showcases Aya’s pitch-perfect vocal abilities. The track features production credits from Aya’s long-time collaborator Xavier Dunn, and was mixed by Chris Collins.
“I was driving to Sydney for my first co-writing session and received news that my sister had cancer,” said Aya about “Dear E.” “It had spread to her bones and couldn’t be treated. I was so angry at the world, so hurt.
I’d spent the last 2-3 years being my sister’s primary support person through her struggles with addiction, and we’d finally been making progress. We’d taken 2 steps forward, only for any reason to keep walking being pulled out from underneath us.
I pulled over, had a huge cry, got myself back together and kept driving. The next day I walked into my session with LANKS and we started laying out a bed for the track. Will asked me to do some mouth percussion, I walked up to the mic and I felt so awkward that I laughed. Hearing the laugh back - I realised just how much it sounds exactly like my sister’s.
When asked what I wanted to write about, I felt like I couldn’t write about anything else, my brain was so consumed. I sat at Will’s dining table and bawled my eyes out, writing a letter about the things I wish I’d done differently.
It’s such a hard topic, there’s so much to say - and how do you get a lifetime of love and grief into a song? And how are you meant to delve into something like that with someone you’ve just met? The thing about someone getting a terminal diagnosis is that you do your grieving whilst they’re still living, and that’s a really hard space to be in. You want to celebrate the life they’ve lived, the moments you’ve shared- and make use of the time you have left together, but at the same time there’s this overwhelming sense of hurt, of anger, of heartbreak.”
“Dear E.” is Aya Yves’s third single of the year, following up “(in)Sanity” and “Smart Girls”, both of which featured the work of talented producer Xavier Dunn (Jack River, CXLOE, Graace, Carmada, Peking Duk), and were added to rotation on triple j Unearthed. “Smart Girls” found favour with tastemakers like Thomas Bleach, Don’t Bore Us (The Brag), Women In Pop, The AU Review, Forte Magazine and more, bringing a powerful message of strength and girl-power to the fore.
A mammoth debut, “(in)Sanity” amassed 30,000 streams in just two months, received nationwide radio play on triple j’s Home and Hosed and led to performances for Isolaid, The Tait Show, Marx Matinees and Live In Ya Lounge.
Aya Yves is the brainchild of a Cooma-born Canberra native Vendulka. Born from a love of pushing boundaries and breaking expectations, Aya contrasts light airy vocals with dark, brooding and quirky production. The Aya Yves project has been taken far from Vendulka’s folk music roots, however, still manages to keep the vulnerability and unifying connection that folk music is known for.
Standing out with her otherworldly vocal abilities and honest approach to songwriting, Aya Yves is quickly becoming one of the premier emerging faces in Australian pop.