Jensen McRae
On a breezy afternoon in Silver Lake, Jensen McRae sits on a park bench, her glasses catching the sunlight as she gestures with restless hands. She is telling a story she has told before, but one that never seems to lose its hold over her.
It was her first therapy session, six years ago. She was talking fast, describing herself as “sensitive,” recounting moments that had overwhelmed her. Then her therapist interrupted. “You’ve told me a lot of thoughts,” she said. “Not one feeling.”
McRae stops mid-sentence in the retelling, eyes wide as though hearing the words anew. “That ruined me,” she says. “Feelings are in the body. Thoughts are in the head.” The line has followed her ever since, an echo that slips into her songwriting as if she’s still trying to bridge the gap.
That mix of overthinking and raw sensation defines McRae’s music — sharp observations wrapped around vulnerable admissions. The 27-year-old Los Angeles native has made a career of taking things apart, examining them from every angle, and then setting them to melodies that burrow deep into the listener’s chest.
She has been at it since childhood. Growing up in Woodland Hills, she was the “bookish” kid with a notebook in hand, scribbling lyrics before she even understood what they meant. Her father, a Harvard-educated lawyer, instilled in her the importance of discipline; her mother, Jewish and equally exacting, made sure no corner of her education went unpolished. Harvard-Westlake sharpened those instincts, pushing her toward rigor and precision.
Yet when she revisits her earliest songs, McRae doesn’t see unfiltered innocence. She sees someone hiding. “I intellectualized everything,” she admits. “It was safer that way.” Today she embraces a more paradoxical approach — songs that can be both clinically incisive and messily human.
That tension pulses through her sophomore album, I Don’t Know How but They Found Me!, released in April by indie powerhouse Dead Oceans. Where her 2022 debut leaned folky and restrained, this record is lush and unafraid, filled with songs that move between intimacy and spectacle.
“Massachusetts,” which first went viral on TikTok, feels like peeking through the blinds on someone else’s heartbreak. In “Let Me Be Wrong,” she channels the ache of the overachiever, confessing that nagging belief that being “good” will never be quite good enough.
But McRae doesn’t let herself off the hook. “I Can Change Him” chronicles the humiliating savior complex she once carried, the fantasy of transforming a broken man with her love. “It’s embarrassing,” she says, laughing now. “But it’s true.”
Other tracks delve into trauma with bracing clarity. “Savannah” paints the hollow spaces left behind by a breakup, while “Daffodils” edges into darker territory, describing a violation in blunt, almost clinical detail. These aren’t songs designed for comfort. They’re designed for honesty.
And then, just when the heaviness settles in, McRae cracks a joke. Her writing is laced with humor, sly punch lines hidden inside ballads. In “I Don’t Do Drugs,” she sings about missing the toxic highs of an old relationship with a wink. In “I Can Change Him,” she sketches a character with just four withering lines: “Same old eight-dollar cologne / Same old he can’t be alone.”
Humor, she insists, is central to who she is. “More than being sad, I need people to know I’m funny,” she says, grinning. It’s her way of refusing to be boxed in. “The sad thing happened to me — that’s why I get to make jokes about it.”
That blend of vulnerability and wit has earned her admirers across the industry. Noah Kahan tapped her as an opener. Justin Bieber invited her to his house after hearing “Massachusetts.” At the El Rey, her hometown crowd packed the venue wall to wall, erupting when she told them: “You are not defined by the worst thing that ever happened to you.”
Her mentor Patrice Rushen, the legendary R&B and jazz musician who taught her at USC, remembers a young songwriter with laser precision. “She always had the ability to see beyond the surface,” Rushen says. “She knew how to find the exact texture, the exact word. That’s rare.”
McRae traces her drive back to her father, who grew up in an era when being Black meant being twice as good for half the reward. “That’s what he taught us,” she says. At Harvard-Westlake, she often felt like an outsider, one of the only Black students in the room. “I didn’t want to be underestimated,” she says. Now, when people misjudge her, she almost enjoys it. “I know they’ll be proven wrong soon enough.”
Her early gigs were small — sometimes just the bartender listening in — but she pushed forward. At 20, she wrote “White Boy,” a song so exposing she wasn’t sure she’d ever play it live. A few years later, her offhand Phoebe Bridgers joke on Twitter went viral, leading her to write the biting single “Immune.” With that, her audience grew from a handful of listeners to a swelling fan base.
The new album, recorded with Brad Cook in North Carolina, builds on that momentum. McRae wanted something expansive, drawing inspiration from early-2000s pop icons like Avril Lavigne while keeping the intimacy of her folk roots. The result is a record that feels both nostalgic and startlingly fresh.
Touring has brought its own challenges. McRae manages a thyroid condition and chronic hives, which means a punishingly strict diet and a carousel of medications. She talks about it openly online, in part to raise awareness, though she laughs about being recognized once at her allergist’s office by a fan. “That one was weird,” she says.
Still, she sees social media as a job, not a lifeline. “It’s my factory,” she says. “I clock in, clock out.” She’s not pretending she doesn’t enjoy her phone — she does — but she’s careful to draw the line between persona and person. “What’s online is my business card. The rest is mine.”
Her music sits in that same in-between space: thought and feeling, pain and punch line, rigor and release. For McRae, the art is in the collision. And if she hasn’t yet stopped replaying that therapist’s words, it’s because she’s still busy turning them into songs.
