She moved to Brooklyn and fell headfirst into the city’s underground music scene. Every week, she would traipse out alone to Queens or far Bushwick to see four or five shows by the eclectic DJs she had followed from her dorm room in Pittsburgh. “What happens when you go alone, depending on your personality, it pushes you to get out there,” she says. After each set, she would eagerly approach the booth. With her natural warmth and talent, she quickly made connections and was eventually welcomed by Discwoman, the collective and agency working solely with female-identifying artists (largely POC and LGBTQIA) to promote inclusivity and gender equality in nightlife communities around the world. It’s with their support, she explains, that she grew into the sort of performer who’s not afraid to blur, or even break through, cultural and artistic categories. Looking back, her success has been particularly “cathartic,” she calls it. “It’s totally cathartic, it’s like saying a big ‘fuck you’ to all the people who screwed with me and thought I was an Asian nobody,” she says.

Yaeji approaches her music the same way a painter might consider a blank canvas. Textures take the forefront—“soft textures, but I also like when it’s thumpy, for lack of a better word”— and she layers them with knife-like precision. Her singular voice—soft and dreamlike, just slightly husky—floats in and out of focus, switching fluidly between English and Korean. But Yaeji wants her work to be something more than pretty sounds. “What I’m most excited about, more than what music I’m trying to make, is how I can create a more unique experience,” she says. “Can my music be considered fine art, and how can I present it in that way? But people are still down to listen to it.”

It’s one reason why she should be labeled a true multimedia artist. Look at “Drink I’m Sippin On.” Inspired by her mother’s history of commissioning self-designed, tailor-made pieces in Korea (“She would make matching blazers for her and me in matching fabrics.”), she headed straight to Unique Thrift Store in downtown Brooklyn this fall, a favorite spot of hers. “I always go to Unique, usually alone on a Sunday, and spend hours thrifting,” she says. That day, she emerged with a heap of blazers, which she then modified with 3M reflective tape, laser-cut into Korean letters that said Yaeji and Drink. For her follow-up “Raingurl,” she ordered semi-sheer white raincoats on Amazon, then added fluorescent tube lighting, programmed to change color via Wi-Fi. “I wanted the outfits to bleed into the color,” she says.

Her style oozes the same personal charm. Back at her apartment, where she kindly offers heaps of chocolate and cups of filter coffee, Yaeji walks us through her closet, pointing out stacks of structured denim, black track pants, and simple tees. “To this day, I have a tendency to dress somewhat minimally, from that long period of wearing basics,” she says. “A lot of plain colors, no patterns, I still like that a lot.” She also gravitates toward Asian designers—favorites include Chitose Abe and Issey Miyake’s pleated pants—as well as experimental Brooklyn-based labels like Eckhaus Latta. Her space is crammed with independent names, picked up at Korean concept shops like A Land (“my favorite”). She also counts herself a fan of Ader Error and Gentle Monster, two Korean brands known for their experiential methods and crossover appeal.

These clothes embody Yaeji—the way she, as an Asian-American artist, captures the unique sensation of being caught between two worlds. Back in Seoul, where she’s quickly gaining fans, she speaks to those Koreans searching for authenticity. Across the U.S., the Korean words drifting through her songs—which began as a tool to conceal her lyrics—have become symbolic. “I noticed that for a lot of Asian girls, it’s a huge change to see someone that’s doing that,” she says. “I didn’t realize that would be a positive side effect of doing music, but now, it’s so important for me to push in that direction and be proud of my heritage.”

“There’s nothing better,” she goes on, “than hearing a girl after my show say, ‘I love that there’s someone who looks like me doing this.’ ”