Nia Perez ‘Things I Wish I Said’ - A Heartfelt Debut That Resonates
- Sonic Sisters Team
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
Pop music has always been a vessel for confession, but Nia Perez has turned confession into form. With her debut EP, Things I Wish I Said, the Venezuelan singer-songwriter arrives not with a commercial statement, but with a personal one—five songs written as unsent letters to people who once held powerful emotional gravity in her life. In a world where artists are encouraged to be louder, bigger, and more public, Perez instead leans into the intimacy of quiet truth, and the result is a body of work that feels deeply lived-in.
Perez blends the sincerity of bedroom pop with the polish of forward-facing indie production. The songs are delicate, but never fragile; beautiful, but never overly adorned. What makes the EP stand out is its literary quality—Perez writes narratives as much as lyrics, shaping each track around the emotional architecture of a moment she never got to speak aloud. The EP plays like reading a diary you weren’t supposed to find, and yet every line feels universal.
“If you had asked me two years ago to share these personal letters with the world, I would have run the other way. But writing these songs has helped me finally say things I kept inside for too long. We’ve all got those unsent letters; maybe hearing mine will help others send theirs.”
“Shapeshifting” sets the emotional tone immediately. It is a portrait of losing oneself in the pursuit of being loved, a condition many listeners will recognize even if they’ve never named it. Perez doesn’t approach heartbreak with melodrama—she approaches it with analysis, as if sitting across from her own younger self and finally explaining what went wrong. It’s the start of a healing process that unfolds across the entire project.
“Not Her,” Perez’s breakout track, is the emotional sting that follows. Here, she describes the ache of seeing a partner attempt to replace you while still chasing reflections of what once was. The power of the song lies in its empathy; Perez does not lash out but instead documents the experience with a rare clarity. You feel the sadness, not the bitterness.
The emotional centerpiece comes in “Oh Sweet July,” a recounting of a breakup that happened on her 17th birthday. Suddenly, the music snaps into a freeze-frame—a real moment, a real place, and a real wound. Her voice sounds like someone revisiting a memory they’ve tried to ignore, and the heartbreak becomes not an abstract concept but a scene etched into the mind. It is the kind of song that reminds listeners of the one moment that changed everything.
What makes Things I Wish I Said special is that Perez does not end in devastation—she ends in reflection. “Little Old Flame” closes the EP with the first real look outward, asking the song’s subject a simple yet devastating question: “Do you like you now that you’re all alone?” It’s not revenge—it’s closure. That is the essence of Perez’s artistry: she is not writing to win the argument; she is writing to understand. And in doing so, she offers listeners a space to understand themselves.
Shoutout to Decent Music PR for sending this artist our way!