“It’s very rare that in life we get to say anything completely honest,” Hana Vu tells Wonderland. “So I’m grateful to be able to come as close as I can to truth via song.” It’s been a few years since the singer-songwriter’s debut album Public Storage introduced us to her corner of lyric-focused alt-pop — and her new project, Romanticism, is the perfect follow-up.

Co-produced with Jackson Phillips, the new album is an intimate and direct coming-of-age exploration of grief, love, and youth, letting us into Vu’s world in a new way. Set over a strong beat, raw and honest lyrics intertwine with satisfying guitar chords and experimental synth progressions to create a sense of movement that fills each track with a bittersweet hopefulness. Even the most heartbreaking tracks have powerful builds that let us know that this album arrives not as the end of a chapter, but the beginning of a book.

Vu takes us track by track through Romanticism, detailing her inspirations and creative process…

“I think this was the first song I wrote for this album around winter of 2021. After Public Storage had come out I felt completely blank and the thought of writing another record daunted me to my core. I really thought about the role songwriting has played in my life, who I am because of it, and who I might be without it. It is very frustrating to get anything started and sometimes everything feels so vast that I don’t even know where to begin with articulating it so I tried to channel that frustration in this song.”

“In this song I sort of was thinking about the more spiritual and psychological ailments I feel have no solutions, which is when one turns to making art. I am someone who is always trying to progress and manage my perspective in order to remain peaceful, however I start to feel like I’m hitting a brick wall within myself. This is when maybe one’s worst impulses permeate. I tried to maybe enact these impulses in songs, where I am most free.”

“This was the absolute last song I wrote for the album. The album was practically ready to go to mixing when I was writing this but I was able to sneak this in right under the wire. I spend a lot of time in solitude and maybe always have, partly because of modern society and partly because of my nature. I really like to criticise the most innocuous aspects of my reality as maybe they are the most impersonal and universal.”

“I wrote this song when I was about to turn 22. I think maybe when you are young every year feels like an immense hurdle and time is excruciating. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by everyday and I want to cocoon in a moment forever.”

“I wrote this song while staring out the window wondering if everyone considered things as much or more or less than I do. Also ruminating on whether or not it mattered. thoughts and feelings might be an eternally individual experience. Also LA.”

“Grief is something I don’t think I could fully understand or process until I wrote this album. Obviously it might be a lifetime sort of thing. Impermanence is maybe what makes life life. However, in this song it doesn’t really sit well with me.”

“In this song I was really thinking out perspective and how anything can be truth or absurdity or a lie or mania or personal depending on your perspective.”

“This song was really fun to produce with Jackson. One of the benefits of making a long song is that you get to exercise some musicianship and try to fill out every little space with texture. I feel like this song really encapsulates the sonic atmosphere I wanted for this record. Air, hard guitars, and massive cymbals.”

“I sometimes feel like I am maybe passing through moments like that of an airplane, from above, looking over. Or like one of those iSpy books where you look at a bunch of junk on a page and fixate on certain objects for a moment only to lose it again to the vast array. I think this was a part of the initial batch of songs I wrote for this album which all felt like I was on a sort of frontier of something.”

“Although I envisioned making a more rock-pop-oriented record I can’t escape the deep compulsions within myself to disregard that and make synthy dance stuff. The melodies that I conjure when in this sort of mode are always more ornamental and interesting to me.”

“This song took me the longest time to write out of all the songs. I wanted to challenge myself to capture love and grief through micro moments, which I think requires a lot of discipline and creativity that I don’t have. I tend to be very macro-minded and see details as something that can be swooped into a greater thesis. This song really allowed me to exercise a muscle that I often forget about.”

“This song feels semi self explanatory. For a lot of these songs and especially this one I wanted to be as overt and simple as possible. The way I think and speak I might describe as convoluted and obscured by cerebrality so I wanted to be real and honest and simple with what I chose to write. It’s very rare that in life we get to say anything completely honest, so I’m grateful to be able to come as close as I can to truth via song.”