YAWN (JULIA MCDOUGALL) ANNOUNCES DEBUT LP, WISH I COULD’VE
OUT JUNE 13, 2025
WATCH / SHARE “HELP MYSELF” HERE
BUY / STREAM “HELP MYSELF” HERE
Photo Credit : Eleni Nikoletsos // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Julia McDougall’s project Yawn unites her far-ranging sensibilities into a supercharged core of misty dream-pop and electronic haze. For the past several years, McDougall has been holed away working on her debut record for Yawn; what’s come out of the clouds are twelve carefully crafted songs that have been developed as inspiration struck from all around her. With a composition degree from Simon Fraser University and a mainstay presence in underground venues and festivals across Western Canada, McDougall’s intricately-layered pop stylings emerge in stories of longing, nostalgia, loss, and hope.
Primarily produced by Jo Hirabayashi (Jo Passed), wish i could’ve is a record about getting older, about losing track of dreams, and being met with feelings of futility and failure. It’s a record about wanting more but not getting it, about loving and losing people, how we move forward, how some feelings never leave us, and how more often than not in life there is no tidy resolution. “I like to write songs that pin down all the feelings that are left floating around, the ones that, even years later, we can’t really make sense of,” McDougall writes. And while many of the songs touch on heavier subject matters, there is still room for lightness and humour in her work.
Today, the Vancouver artist is following up recent single, “broken baby”, with the new track, “help myself”, a song that challenges toxic positivity and the pressure to be the “best version” of ourselves. “It’s about the various kinds of doubt and darkness that we face, and how the constant noise of social media and mainstream culture dulls our ability to love ourselves,” explains McDougall. “It was inspired by social media ads I was served during the early, frantic days of COVID isolation that were promising me that now was the time to finally ‘get ripped’. It seemed detached from our lived reality that in the middle of a global pandemic, we were being force-fed so-called wellness ads that completely overlooked the psychological and emotional impact we were all facing. The song is about our relationship to ourselves, and how our media consumption habits make it easy to go about our lives without truly connecting to who we are. It’s also about the struggle to find meaning in the mundanity of everyday life – standing in grocery store lines, going to work, going to a work out class, scrolling all the while – and how sometimes it’s impossible to make sense of how the sum of all of these things add up to a life.”
WATCH / SHARE “HELP MYSELF” HERE
BUY / STREAM “HELP MYSELF” HERE
wish i could’ve is a record that was made to make you simultaneously laugh, cry, sway and dance and it holds a universality that reaches out and holds the listener’s hand. Amongst this panorama of emotion is McDougall’s distinct voice, laid out across Yawn’s spectrum of melodies as the melancholic heart of the project. With cues from Beach House, Haim, Mitski and Caroline Polacheck, Yawn’s sound and vision will linger with you like fog on a spring morning, lifting with the heat of the sun to reveal the buds finally opening.
LISTEN / SHARE “BROKEN BABY” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BROKEN BABY” HERE
WISH I COULD’VE TRACKLIST
01 help myself
02 broken baby
03 coloured light
04 wish i could’ve
05 you & i
06 let it all go
07 i deserve better
08 wading in the water
09 back in my head
10 world is burning
11 wasting time
12 take your time