Japanese American multi-disciplinary artist & singer-songwriter Lea Thomas has unveiled “Hummingbird” today, her soulful new single released alongside a colorful, kaleidoscopic video via Spirit House Records. The song illustrates a “uniquely and unforgettably beautiful dream” in which Thomas “dissolved into a pool of saltwater and re-emerged as a large white wolf, boundless and free.” The trippy video, created by multimedia animator Carter Lou McElroy, brings the vivid dreamlike state to life with cut-outs of Thomas moving through a variety of collaged landscapes, joined along the way by a whimsical cast of animal characters appearing as they are mentioned in the narrative. As the song builds, the scenes become multilayered and colorful, culminating in a climactic representation of the chorus’s opening line, “My heart started beating to the song of the universe.”

Born in Hawaii and based in Brooklyn, Lea Thomas started her musical journey early, first with piano and then moving to guitar at 13 years old. A self-taught engineer, she left home at 17 to attend engineering school in New York City. In addition to her work as a musician, songwriter and producer, Thomas is a visual artist with a focus on hand weaving and natural dyes. Her frequent use of indigo pigment is symbolic of her Japanese heritage, honoring a lineage of kimono makers and textile artisans in her immediate ancestry. She is also a long-time student of traditional herbal medicine and produces a seasonal line of wild, hand-harvested herbal products under the name All In All Apothecary.