Brooke Lee’s Desert Darling EP will be out on April 17. The six-track project, her second, is an honest look at what her life has been like, especially since her freshman I’ve Been Thinking came out in 2023.

“I wanted to write a chapter about my early 20s,” Lee tells Everything Nash. “So this is me, 19 to 25, and I just felt like there were so many life lessons and experiences in those years that I wanted to share. But I also wanted to be able to release this chapter and close it and kind of move on in life. And so we really dug in, from being 19 to where I am now. So I’m very excited. I feel like it’s a great road trip EP. I’m such a road tripper myself, so I wanted this to be something that other people would turn on and jam to in the car.

“It has a lot of vulnerability to it as well,” she adds. “It’s exciting. I feel like current fans will get to really know who I am, but also new fans. It’s a perfect opportunity to jump on and get to know me. It’s a good introduction to who I am, so I’m very excited about it.”

Lee just released “Just Because” from Desert Darling.

How Brooke Lee’s ‘Desert Darling’ Differs From ‘I’ve Been Thinking’

As Lee has grown and evolved, so has her music. Rightfully proud of both projects, the North Carolina native shows more of who she is with all of the songs on Desert Darling.

“This one honestly was so special because I feel like the first go round of the EP, I didn’t really have grounding on who I was yet, and what I truly wanted to say as an artist,” Lee explains. “And so going into this project, it felt so true to me, and way more true to me than it did on the first go around. And I feel like this project, my fingerprints are just all over it. It was a big trust your gut process. … It’s honestly been really, really special. It was a lot of work, but it was a really cool opportunity to get to work with some different people and run with it.”

Brooke Lee Shares the Story Behind the Title Track of ‘Desert Darling’

Lee wrote “Desert Darling” with Danielle Blakey, who also produced the EP. One of the most important songs on the project, it’s also the last one Lee wrote for the record.

“We thought, ‘Let’s just try to write one more for the EP,'” Lee recalls. “It wasn’t even gonna be called ‘Desert Darling’ originally. Danielle had this really vibed out track, and it really felt like even the music wrapped up the project in a cool way. So we ran with it. She and I wrote ‘Desert Darling,’ and the song itself, I just feel like it captures who I am.

Lee traveled to the desert in California a couple of years prior for her birthday, a trip that ended up becoming the impetus for Desert Darling.

“I asked a friend of mine, ‘Can we go to California, and I wanna book no hotel rooms, just a rental car and just, I wanna see what happens,” Lee remembers. “And we did it.”

While there, they also happened to score tickets to see her favorite band, the Eagles, part of what became one of the most inspirational trips of her life.

“Something about the desert really stood out to me on that trip,” Lee says. “And I really wanted to bring it back into the EP. And so, Desert Darling was just this title that stood out to me for a while. And I felt like it was kind of a missing part of the EP, in the storyline, and the love song of the EP. So it wrapped it up, and I’m very excited about it. It’s been fun getting it out there.”

Pre-order Desert Darling, and find all of Lee’s music and upcoming shows, at BrookeLeeMusic.com.