LINYING PREMIERES NEW SINGLE/VIDEO “DIAL TONE”

Los Angeles-via-Singapore artist Linying today shared her new single/video “Dial Tone,” the latest off her forthcoming sophomore album Swim, Swim, due out April 4^th via Nettwerk. Bolstered by an irresistible groove, the song is soft-spoken and twinkling. Its cinematic Lenne Chai-directed video—which features The L Word’s Leo Sheng and 13 Reasons Why’s Michele Selene Ang—debuted at PAPER Magazine. Seattle-based trans actor and drag queen Mikey Xu gives a powerful lead performance as a trans woman at her sister’s traditional Chinese wedding, disguising herself as a cishet man to appease her parents. As she grapples with the tension between her true identity and societal and familial pressures, she confronts the personal cost of conforming to others’ expectations. Linying plays the wedding singer watching it all unfold. Of the project, Linying explains:

“Lenne and I are both from Singapore — we’d moved to LA at different times and hadn’t really kept in touch, but I have always admired her work greatly. I remember a personal photo series she did many years ago titled ‘A337’ that depicted a traditional Chinese wedding between two women: sadly an unlikely scenario in Singapore.

Lenne did a beautiful and seemingly effortless job of bringing everyone together for this video — she wrote this moving, delicate story about our trans heroine trying to make it through her sister’s wedding, rang up countless dim sum restaurants across Los Angeles and posted casting calls on Facebook groups. We received so many responses from people — extras who were touched by the narrative, crew members whose personal experiences related, art teams, florists and wedding cake designers who went out of their way to make this project as beautiful as it was meaningful.

On one of our rehearsals where everyone was gathered at my house sitting cross-legged on the floor having tea and mung bean pastries, Leo and Michele, who have been actors in Los Angeles for years now, said that they had never been part of a production with this many Asian cast and crew members, which surprised me. Lenne and I, with our barely passable Singaporean-pidgin-Mandarin (we both speak it somewhat natively, but not very eloquently), took turns translating between our American friends and Andy, an actor actually from China who had a past life as a ballerina in London and who, coincidentally, had his own wedding 30 years ago at 888 Seafood, where we shot the music video.

I think it’s cosmically nice and apt too that this is all coming out in between Chinese New Year and Valentines’ Day. Familial ties, the moon, love…”

“Dial Tone” is available to stream at all DSPs, HERE. Swim, Swim is available for pre-order HERE.

Swim, Swim emerged from a disorienting but dreamlike period Linying spent partly living on the remote Filipino island of Siargao, during which the singer/songwriter embarked on what she refers to as a “parallel discovery of self and femininity.” Linying traveled there five times over the course of a chaotic year marked by personal heartbreak and the immense upheaval of moving to L.A. from her homeland. “By learning to lean into the unpredictable but also wildly beautiful landscape that surrounded me, I developed an intimacy with the part of myself that’s ruled by feeling and desire, after a lifetime of being partial to my rational mind,” says Linying.

Swim, Swim is the follow-up to 2023’s House Mouse EP, which earned great press from NYLON, LA Weekly, FLOOD (feature), Brooklyn Vegan, Under the Radar, Atwood Magazine (feature), MXDWN, Northern Transmissions, and more. It’s also Linying’s first full-length release since There Could Be Wreckage Here (a 2022 LP made with former Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla), and arrives nearly a decade after the breakout success of her 2016 single “Sticky Leaves”—a lovely introduction to her poetic lyrics and idiosyncratic sense of melody, an element largely informed by her deep familiarity with classical Chinese music and its use of the pentatonic scale. In sculpting Swim Swim’s gorgeously detailed form of dream-pop, Linying and her trio of longtime creative partners Jon Graber, Brandon Benson, and former Toro y Moi touring guitarist Jordan Blackmon joined forces with an eclectic lineup of collaborators that includes avant-jazz composer/multi-instrumentalist Spencer Zahn (Jessica Pratt, Kimbra) and electronic/hip-hop producer AOBeats. With all songs co-produced by Linying and mixed by Graber, Swim, Swim ultimately embodies a spellbinding fluidity that closely echoes her newfound sense of surrender.

Swim, Swim LP Tracklist:

1. Fridge

2. Swim, Swim

3. Blondie

4. Dial Tone

5. Donovan

6. Pink Gel

7. The Key

8. Birthdays on Video

9. Centre of Attention

10. Good Is Better Than Better