This article is the winner of the 2024 DC College Student Arts Journalism Competition. Learn more about the 2024 competition on our website here.
In “Venus in the Sea,” the blushing lead single from Ha Vay’s 2023 EP Avalanches and Unfamiliar Ways to Die, the singer-songwriter wails “enraptured in the bluest dark, I captured your beating heart.” Just over a year later on her debut album Baby I’m The Wolf (2024), Ha Vay enraptures us all over again. Here, Ha Vay plucks Venus out of the sea and drops her into the bleeding heart of the forest, extending a hand to us so that we may follow her down the rabbit hole. Enriched with crystalline, caterwauling vocals and enchanting, literary-infused lyrics, to step through the portal into Ha Vay’s musical world is to be transported to a glistening, fern-canopied grove where feminine wiles and feminine wild collide.
Released at the tail end of June, Baby I’m The Wolf is a gossamer love letter to female ferocity—look no further than the album cover which sees Ha Vay screaming towards the sky in a berry-stained white frock for proof. Despite the deceptive docility of her delicate, cobweb-spun cadence—equal parts pillowy and entrancing—Ha Vay sings of howling at the moon and unleashing the powerful, unbridled spirit churning within her. The result of this sonic and lyrical contrast? A recognizable yet refreshing portrait of the ongoing struggle between external expression and internal repression that many women know all too well.
“This album is my experience of girlhood,” Ha Vay said in an interview with the Voice. “For me, a lot of that is sort of being someone who presents very soft and feminine. I don’t even think I realized that I did until a couple of years ago when I started making music. I was like ‘oh, I guess I have kind of a very feminine persona,’ because in my head I feel really wild and adventurous and crazy and all kinds of things. I think for me girlhood is kind of a journey of reconciling those two sides and trying to figure out how to be who I am and still feel accepted.”
In Baby I’m The Wolf’s sparkling opener “Ophelia,” Ha Vay makes it clear that “soft” and “strong” can coexist harmoniously—a thematic current which cascades throughout the rest of the record. While Shakespeare’s original Ophelia is primarily defined by her sorrow and her relationships with men, Ha Vay reimagines Hamlet’s leading lady as a starry-eyed yet self-sufficient daydreamer. “Ophelia at the window, pining for that first snow / she’s twirling like a ballerina, never caring how you see her,” she sings in the echoey first verse.
“Ophelia is really special to me,” Ha Vay said. “I’m really proud of the writing in that one and it just kind of flowed through me in a way that was really special.”
While much of the LP embraces both the mild and the wild, the title track sees Ha Vay, exhausted by being misunderstood as one-dimensional, finding solace in unabashed ferality. After a breathy, celestial beginning, the bridge roars to life with a galloping drum beat as Ha Vay repeats the song’s central mantra: “You think you’ve caught a lamb, but baby, I’m the wolf.” In conversation, Ha Vay elects “self love and self discovery” as the two core themes of the project, making this feisty anthem of redefinition and reclamation a perfect choice to represent the album as a whole.
“Ophelia” is not the only song on the record which harkens back to Shakespeare. According to the songstress, Queen Titania and King Oberon—the fae royalty of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—were similar sources of visual and thematic inspiration for this album. Likewise, “Angel! Wild! Superstar!” follows a pair of star-crossed lovers “on the hunt for a violent delight” à la Romeo and Juliet. Besides the Bard, the record also references a famous quotation from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in the sultry “Pretty Baby”: “I bewitch him, body and soul.” Ha Vay also takes ample cues from the world of cinema, citing Maya Deren’s surrealist short film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and a number of A24 horror films—namely X (2022), Pearl (2022), Midsommar (2019), and The VVitch (2015)—as inspirations of hers.
Above all other media, however, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando is the piece of art that consumes Ha Vay’s headspace most wholeheartedly. “I’ll never get over Orlando,” Ha Vay said. “I think everything I make is somehow adjacent to that book, and I’ve read it so many times. I read it for the first time when I was seventeen, and I feel like it hit me at just the right time to change my whole brain.”
Baby I’m The Wolf’s penultimate track “Nature’s Bride” gets its name from a pivotal passage in Woolf’s illustrious novel in which her eponymous protagonist declares “I have found my mate…It is the moor. I am nature’s bride.” A sweet surrender to the gentle grandeur of the natural world, this ode to the untamable climaxes with the protagonist breathily pleading for the earth to “entwine these vines ’round my fingers.” Underpinning the delicate piano melody, the swift and swishy muted acoustic guitar strums capture the heart-thumping euphoria of running with the wolves.
“I’ve been trying to write that song for years, and I’m really happy with how it came together,” Ha Vay said. “I consider that to be kind of the pinnacle or the thesis of the album.”
Though “Nature’s Bride” has been trying to clamor its way out into the world for quite a while, typically Ha Vay’s songwriting process is much more intuitive and quick-moving.
“I really never spend more than like 30 or 45 minutes writing a song,” Ha Vay said. “If it doesn’t happen easily, I tend to think that, for me, it’s probably not right. It might mean that sort of the same concept comes back reincarnated in another song form at another time, but I feel like, to me, if I’m battling a song while I’m writing it, I feel like the audience can feel that battle, so it has to come naturally and as nonjudgmentally as possible.”
The fearlessness and fluidity which characterize Ha Vay’s creative process shines through all ten tracks on Baby I’m The Wolf. Ha Vay’s prioritization of “not forcing it”’ pays off in spades—each song feels thoughtful yet easy-going all at once. Likewise, in its steadfast exploration of multi-faceted womanhood, the album cleverly balances sonic and thematic cohesion with the concoction of a distinct tracklist. While all the songs are bound by a folksy pop flavor tailor-fit for the forest, melodies never feel one-note. The album staunchly side-steps monotony, ensuring each tune still feels uniquely momentous in its own right.
Against a confident chorus of electric guitars and swinging drums, “Fragile” sees our narrator as anything but; “I’m phenomenal, try me and then you’ll see.” The eerie, operatic “Vampires” features a shivering, phantasmic piano melody perfect for the Halloween season. “The Huntress” and “Moon Girl” are back-to-back, silky-smooth-talking tracks anchored by swampy basslines and bashful seduction. The latter is a particular gem, with Ha Vay masterfully locking the listener in her orbit thanks to twinkling, silver strings and howling vocals. On the eclectic, electrifying Baby I’m The Wolf, lightning does in fact strike the same place twice—actually, make that ten times.
The clarity of creative vision found across Ha Vay’s work is particularly impressive considering her greenness. Though she has been making music her entire life, Ha Vay officially began working on releasing music as a solo artist under her stage name—a name which pays homage to her Chinese heritage—during the pandemic, thanks in large part to the encouragement of her former bandmate turned producer Elliott “Woodbridge” Jacobs. You’d never know it just by listening to the polished debut record itself, but the singer is very candid about the small-scale, low-budget nature of her production endeavors.
“I don’t know how clear this is or isn’t, but the album and all of the videos and everything, it is all an extremely DIY operation,” Ha Vay said. “It’s pretty much just like three people—though sometimes more people join in—but I’m so grateful for the people who have worked on this with me and have brought this to life. In the loveliest way possible, everything is kind of duct-taped together, and it was such a team effort to really move mountains and make something out of nothing, so I just want everyone to know that—that it’s been such a journey to do it and that it still is.”
As of the release of her latest video for “He Wants The Rain,” seven out of the ten songs from Baby I’m The Wolf currently have music videos; the three remaining include “Fragile,” “Vampires,” and “The Huntress.” However, according to Ha Vay, not only will all ten tracks have videos by the end of the album cycle—all ten will combine with supplemental narrative scenes to create a short film to accompany the album. Tentatively, Ha Vay plans to release this project on Sept. 1.
These videos are largely the manifestation of a creative collaboration between Ha Vay and Emily Oreste, her best friend since first grade. Though Ha Vay is somewhat self-deprecating when she refers to her videos as “duct-taped together,” in actuality the grainy, found-footage-style visuals are endlessly charming and intimate. Each video feels like a precious peek into a clandestine life lived entirely on the protagonist’s own terms. Girls in flowy white dresses and flower crowns frolic in fields; Ha Vay explores a gothic, candle-lit house, applies rouge in a dusty mirror, prances through the snow, and spins in the starlight; Lovers come and go, but her coven proves everlasting. Ha Vay presents us with a peculiar yet alluring little world we are eager to lose ourselves in.
“We’re shooting on my producer’s Dad’s 1999 camcorder that we found rummaging around—like we didn’t have a camera or anything,” Ha Vay said. “Most of the props and so many of the costumes are handmade. So many friends dedicated so much time—like my friend Nicole designed dresses for some of the videos. People worked so hard for no money, just dedicating their time and their talents to making the music videos come to life which was just so special to me, because for me, every song is not complete without a video.”
In addition to the upcoming movie, Ha Vay is opening for fellow singer-songwriter Sarah Kinsley on tour this fall. The pair will be coming to Washington D.C. at Union Stage on Oct. 6.
“I’ve been a big fan of Sarah’s for a while, and I don’t even have a booking agent, so I guess she just had her management email me and I was so excited,” Ha Vay said. “I’ve never been on a big tour like that, so it’s a little bit daunting but very exciting, and I couldn’t be more excited that it’s with someone whose music I admire so much. I think it’s gonna be a whole new chapter. I’ve only really met listeners from California because that’s where I’ve played, so it’s gonna be amazing to meet more people. I might try out some new material as well, so it’s gonna be really, really fun.”
Rooted in delectably dreamy production and a strong sense of self, Ha Vay’s Baby I’m The Wolf is a once-in-a-blue-moon debut. For indie pop lovers looking to take a walk on the wild side, this bewitching, transcendent record is a must-listen.
Hailey Wharram is a senior at Georgetown University from Richmond, Virginia. She is majoring in English with minors in journalism and film and media studies. Hailey is an Associate Editor at The Georgetowner and also writes for The Georgetown Voice.
