About 

Emily Tei is a young singer-songwriter based on the Mornington Peninsula. She first turned to music and performing as a form of self-expression after being selectively mute throughout primary school, finding that the stage was where she was able to truly express herself in a way she hadn’t been able to articulate before. As such, Emily’s songs are often intimate and vulnerable, coming from a longing for connection and community.

Emily’s influences are Missy Higgins, Maisie Peters and Maya Hawke. ‘Scar’ was the first song Emily ever sang in front of an audience and kickstarted her love for performing. Her family is also quite musical, her father especially. Ever since she was a child, she’s been around music, watching her dad perform in his band – ‘Flesh Puppets’. To her dad’s friends, she’s nothing more than “a chip off the old block”.

A former aspiration of Emily’s was that she wanted to be an author and her songs hold hints of that, as she often explores fiction as well as truth in her music. In a similar vein, some of her songs also contain references to her favourite pieces of fiction, such as ‘Tabula Rasa’ being named after a Buffy episode and ‘Burn’ being inspired by a fictional love story.

Emily released her debut single ‘Turn Back Time’ and EP ‘Seventeen’ in 2023, exploring the loneliness and general teenage angst she felt in the aftermath of covid lockdown.