Tei Shi’s new album, ‘Make believe I make believe’, is a defining moment. It’s where she stops trying to figure out the rules and starts building her own magical reality. She seamlessly blends cultural fluidity and a vibe of surreal escapism into a profoundly personal, totally independent sound. Bouncing between Spanish and English, she transforms this project into a vibrant, genre-bending mood that’s completely honest and all her own.

Your new album is titled ‘Make believe I make believe’. How does that title reflect the wide range of sounds on the record?

The title is abstract; it’s a little bit like surreal. It came from a lyric that was one of the first lyrics I wrote for the album from the first single, “Best be leaving”. I was just in this very kind of like magical, like suspended from reality place when I was making this album. I gravitate towards things that are a little bit surreal, a little bit like hard to pinpoint. And I think that’s kind of how a lot of my music feels.

Your music is culturally fluid, seamlessly blending English and Spanish. How do you approach writing in both languages?

It’s really interesting because it kind of changes. It really initially just depends on what the music is kind of pulling out of me. Sometimes I’ll get a lyric, either in English or Spanish. It’s really fun to find words that work together or that even rhyme in English and Spanish. And that also allows for a lot of the just Spanglish of it all. I think that with Spanish, I tend to write from more of a really like deeply, intrinsic place, whereas with English, I think I’m able to be a little bit more like analytical sometimes, or a little bit more like ironic. I really like the ability to jump around.

Your latest album is your second independent full-length project. How did working independently change your creative process this time?

This album, ‘Make believe I make believe’, was the first time that I, from beginning to end, the entire process was just me and my musical collaborators, no other voices or opinions. I felt like it was the first time that I was able to say, “I want to make an album like this,” make it this way, in this amount of time, I want to release it. It was really just completely free. And so, with ‘Valerie’, it was my first time producing an album independently, so I learned a lot from that experience that I was able to then apply to ‘Make believe I make believe’.

You’re currently on your North American tour and about to embark on a 2026 European tour. How does performing live compare to creating your sound in the studio?

Oh, wow, it’s so different. It really is like rediscovering the music in a whole new way when you start performing it. I think at my core, I’m like a studio girly. I love the process, just as I love the writing, the recording, the engineering, and the production. But then, through the years of touring and performing, I’ve also really honed my love for performing. It’s accessing two different toolboxes. With performing, I find it’s really just like practice. And performance is very subjective, depending on the crowd, the city you’re in, and what they’re giving back to you.

What’s one dream artist you wish to collaborate with?

I would love to collaborate with Nathy Peluso. She’s amazing. She’s from Argentina and Spain. I love her. Her song “DELITO” is off her last album, ‘Calambre’, which is the name of the album. And it’s just like a really, it’s just like a sexy, really fun, great, great like banger.