UMI

With a vocal tone both embracing and exposed, UMI crafts introspective alternative soul pieces that revolve chiefly around emotional connections. The performer first gained widespread attention in 2018 through pieces such as "Remember Me" and "Butterfly," then issued her initial major-label project, the EP Introspection, in 2020. Her first full-length effort, Forest in the City, followed in 2022. She achieved a chart entry in 2023 via the duet "Wherever U R" with BTS member V, before unveiling the EP Talking to the Wind at the start of 2024.

Tierra Umi Wilson entered the world in Seattle during 1999 and had already begun maintaining a personal songwriting notebook by age five. During secondary school she posted regular cover versions online, yet after encountering copyright obstacles she pivoted to self-written material laid over royalty-free instrumentals using only a basic USB microphone. Her earliest self-produced tracks surfaced in 2016, with the debut EP Interlude arriving the next year; each song featured a separate outside producer and secured placement on prominent streaming lists. While attending USC in Los Angeles, she was signed by 408 Records in early 2018. Later that same year, independent releases including "Remember Me" accumulated hundreds of thousands of streams.

In mid-2019 she put out the two-song collection Balance and then aligned with J.J. Abrams’ Loud Robot imprint for the visual EP Love Language. That year she also withdrew from university to focus exclusively on music. Released in October 2019, Love Language contained the track "Love Affair," which surpassed a million streams. Around the same period she appeared on Cautious Clay’s “Saturday Morning Cartoons.” Keep Cool/RCA Records issued her subsequent EP, Introspection, in 2020, followed by Introspection Reimagined in 2021. Her self-penned debut album Forest in the City emerged in 2022. The 2023 singles “Happy Im” and “Why Don’t We Go” were later incorporated into the 2024 EP Talking to the Wind. She additionally scored a charting success with the standalone “Wherever U R” featuring South Korea’s V, which reached number five on Billboard’s Digital Songs chart and number twenty on the R&B chart. The understated follow-up “Butterfly II” surfaced in November 2024.