New York City taught Indy Yelich how to fly solo

On her new EP, Fame Is A Bedroom, the New Zealand native comes into her own as a pop songwriter distinct from her older sister Lorde.

When I mention to Indy Yelich that I’ve heard she’s a Knicks fan, she’s quick to correct me. “No, no, no, that’s an understatement,” she says. “I’m the biggest fucking Knicks fan in this life. Truly, I don’t shut up about it. For me, honestly I swear to God, The Knicks are literally this album.”

New York City’s prodigious basketball team has given Yelich more than just entertainment. It’s helped her get over a breakup and find the energy to write her second EP, Fame Is A Bedroom — released under just her first name — out August 1. “I would go to these restaurant bars, watch The Knicks, bring a journal, write this whole EP, read, and watch a game that’s not about love, it’s not about identity, it’s not about loss. It’s a game.”

Indy talks about The Knicks with the fervor of a New Yorker, but the city is a world away from her roots in New Zealand. The 26-year-old singer and songwriter spent her childhood writing poetry and music, encouraged by her mother, award-winning poet Sonja Yelich. After high school, as she bounced between Los Angeles and New York, she released her first poetry collection, Sticky Notes, in 2018, followed by her second, Dudette, in 2022.

Indy says that moving to New York City at 18 sparked her transition from poet to songwriter, and her new EP is packed with nods to the city. The shaky music video for “Sail Away,” a song about a codependent queer friendship, was shot in front of Indy’s favorite local bar, while the bridge of the pensive “Grace” was inspired by Carrie Bradshaw’s popularization of the taxi cab theory.

“I’m attracted to bars and people and things that aren’t the norm because my life is not necessarily the norm,” Indy says. She’s hinting at not only the unique experience of being a young artist, but also the connection at the core of her new song “Idol” — her relationship with her older sister Lorde.

Ahead of the arrival of Fame Is A Bedroom, a project that grapples with the “abnormal” and brings hidden parts of her life up to the surface, Indy talks honing her identity as a songwriter, doing album rollouts with Lorde, and the New York City of it all.

The FADER: I saw your Instagram post celebrating the Virgin release and thought it showed a really wonderful relationship. What has it been like to do album rollouts with Ella (Lorde) at the same time?

Indy Yelich: We’re only two years apart and we spend a lot of time in the same city. So I think that we became a lot closer, as you do with your siblings when you’re older. I heard a lot of Virgin throughout it being made, and she heard a lot of my songs. There’s a song “Idol” that I’ve written about her that she’s heard and she loves.

It’s kind of funny, there’s this [Spotify] playlist called Young and Free and this new song I have, “Up in Flames,” has just come out and it got all this amazing Spotify play. But there’s one thing that I noticed. There was [Lorde’s] song “Broken Glass,” and they put “Up in Flames” right next to it, which I thought was really special. It’s quite magical, especially because I’m really over the moon about Virgin. It really feels personal to me in a sense because we spent so much time together when it was being made and so many sleepovers and things like that. It’s quite surreal as Fame Is A Bedroom is starting to come out and it’s alongside each other.

I listened to your album first, and when I heard Ella’s song, “Favorite Daughter,” it reminded me of your song “Idol.” Some of the lyrics really complement each other. How do you navigate family when you have the spotlight and how do you get yourself to open up about it in your writing?

“Idol” is about the intimacy of sisterhood when the world is watching, you know, and I would give you a direct quote from it that would explain it all. Two lyrics from “Idol.” One is, “we’ve got the same hands, but I’ve got my own scars,” and another one is, “they don’t understand your love, they’ll never be bound by blood.”

In a sense, even though she is, you know, really in the spotlight, and essentially the most well-known person in my room, in the room, she’s the one that sees me and knows me the best, and I can say the same about her. So it really is learning to trust that relationship and the intimacy of sisterhood and how sacred that connection is. You shut the door and then the fame’s out there and then it’s just the two of us sisters in the room. I would say that it’s quite extraordinary to be able to put those nuances into words.

Do you think that seeing Ella navigate this fame has influenced how you are now approaching your own journey navigating the public eye?

I would almost say the opposite because my emotional journey is only mine. And I had to really figure out my own likes, my own creative voice, quite early on. I was talking to a friend about this, and I would say that being confident in who I am has made our bond stronger, and I think that it has also made my artistic voice. I’m a young adult, and I’m experiencing these heartbreaks and these queer friendships and these big formative relationships. So alongside that is figuring out that my identity isn’t always tied to someone else’s.

“Sail Away” is one of my favorite songs on the project, and it stands out sonically from the others. Was there a reason why you took a different approach?

I wanted it to be fast, sassy, vengeful, you know, a codependent kind of friendship. I think female friendships and female relationships are the most intense. The way women love each other is, like, bloody. I feel like [writing “Sail Away”] has scarred me the most in a sense. How I feel about it now is still how I felt when I wrote it. There’s a beauty to it, because I swear every single woman in my life or in your life will tell you that we all have that one friendship that went wrong or affected us.

On Instagram, you said that “Sail Away” was the first song you ever talked about “being out and proud publicly.” Have there been any other artists who have given you inspiration on the journey of being able to talk about this with the world?

Honestly, probably Chappell [Roan]. When I heard “Casual,” that really changed something. For me, a lot of it is not that I really struggle with sexuality, but it’s more that I struggle with the male gaze and this performative thing of always being attractive for a man. And I think that when I heard “Casual” and that bridge, I realized, oh shit, maybe there was so much more behind that friendship than I thought.

One of the things that you’ve talked about quite a bit is the impact of moving to New York when you were so young at 18. How do you think that you and the city have both evolved since you first came here?

New York doesn’t really take bullshit from you. I moved overseas so young, with such a preconceived idea of who I thought I was. Being in a fast-paced city actually helped me slow down, I think. It helped me get a sense of community, just learn about myself, my own identity. I’ve been [in New York] so many years that I have seen it change. I moved there way before COVID, so it just felt very different. Even my favorite bars I go to, you know, that are cash only, local dive bars, I’ve just seen such an influx of people.

What do you love about The Knicks?

It’s joyful and people love it, and it’s American, and it makes me think of New York and my love for it. I met some of my best friends through just talking to people at Knicks games. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know where it came from, but it’s truly my obsession. I know I would have made it when I’m going courtside. And truly one of the reasons why I want to do this is so I can go to Knicks games.

I think it’s interesting you fed off the energy of their games while you were writing this EP.

[The Knicks] doesn’t revolve around me, doesn’t revolve around my emotional interior. It’s about New York. It’s about everyone. You know, I could say Jalen Brunson or Josh Hart and the room lights up because everyone loves them. And you need that, you know, you have to be out in the world and just get away from your own stuff sometimes.

The Knicks mean so much to me because I associate that with being solo in the world and meeting people. A lot of this EP is the departure from all of these relationships and myself.

Indy’s ‘Fame is a Bedroom’ EP is out August 1.