Nia Perez’s debut EP, Things I Wish I Said, is a study in unspoken emotional aftermath—an archive of letters never sent, heavy with the weight of everything left unsaid. Born in Venezuela and raised between worlds, Perez situates herself at the intersection of indie pop and diaristic bedroom songwriting. The record, dreamy yet cutting, feels like rifling through a stack of sealed envelopes you’re not sure you should read. What emerges is a cohesive narrative about the versions of ourselves that love shapes, breaks, and ultimately leaves behind.
“If you had asked me two years ago to share these personal letters with the world, I would have run the other way,” Nia shares. “But writing these songs has helped me finally say things I kept inside for too long. We’ve all got those unsent letters; maybe hearing mine will help others send theirs.”
“Shapeshifting,” the opener, is the thesis statement. Perez captures something not often said aloud: the grief of losing oneself in the pursuit of being loved. Her vocals are calm, almost resigned, as she sings about bending into new shapes for someone who never bothered to see her. That quiet fury—elegant, soft, but undeniable—comes to define the EP.
“Not Her” and “Oh Sweet July” show Perez at her most cinematic. The former deals with betrayal and displacement without resorting to melodrama; the latter is a painful freeze-frame of a breakup on a 17th birthday in New York, a moment Perez manages to render universal. “How could you do this to me?” reads as both accusation and echo, the kind that lingers when you close a door alone. There’s a maturity here that belies the artist’s age, and it’s one of the EP’s greatest strengths.
By the time Things I Wish I Said reaches “Little Old Flame,” Perez is no longer pleading—she is analyzing, detaching, and finally reclaiming herself. The question “Do you like you now that you’re all alone?” isn’t cruelty, but closure. This is a project that understands emotional architecture, and Perez constructs her own with disarming clarity. It marks the arrival of a songwriter unafraid to be vulnerable, unafraid to hurt, and most importantly, unafraid to tell the truth.
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PR: Decent Music PR