A person with shoulder-length dark hair and tattoos on their arms sits against a dark background, looking down and to the side with one hand resting on their opposite shoulder—soft, moody lighting.

Mini Trees’ latest album took Lexi Vega on a journey of self discovery

The process of writing "Slow It Down" helped the Japanese Cuban American singer-songwriter learn many things about herself

Lexi Vega is the musician behind Mini Trees.

Seannie Bryan

Words by Quin Scott

I first came across Mini Trees on the Jay Som song “Cards On the Table,” and was quickly hooked by their album Slow It Down, released independently in November 2025. I had just left my job amidst a broader reshuffling and reconsidering of my life; I was staring into depthless gray Seattle skies, daunted and fascinated by what may be next for me. Slow It Down captured many of the feelings I found myself swimming in. I was curious about the context behind the album; Lexi Vega, the musician who performs under the Mini Trees stage name, describes Slow It Down as “a record where I unknowingly wrote myself out of a life I couldn’t live anymore.”

I had the chance to catch up with Vega from her hometown of Los Angeles in a slower moment, after a year of self-discovery and before embarking on her upcoming tour to hear more about her personal and creative journey.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

A person with dark hair and tattoos sits in a dimly lit space, illuminated by a narrow beam of light highlighting their face and upper body against a dark background.

Mini Trees' album "Slow It Down," came out in November 2025.

Seannie Bryan

Quin Nelson: I was really interested in talking to you about your process as a writer. What was that like for Slow it Down, and how have you grown as a songwriter over your time doing Mini Trees?
Lexi Vega: I've always found songwriting to be the most natural way for me to process past memories, current anxieties, fears for the future, or whatever. It feels easier to be vulnerable in song format for whatever reason. What made this album, Slow It Down, the most unique so far is I was processing in real time as I was writing these songs, stuff that I wasn't consciously totally aware of yet. I had all of these feelings bubbling up that I didn't totally understand, and then was writing about them as if it was more of a thought experiment. And then later, I realized it was actually all kind of leading me towards some really big life decisions and changes, most notably being that I had been married to my college best friend basically since college, who's a man. I had known I've been queer for years, but came to understand it in a totally different way in the last year.

Basically, I thought that I was bi, and kind of came to the realization through writing a lot of these songs that actually, deep down, I knew that I was gay, and he and I were truly best friends and that made it hard for me to face the reality of choosing myself and choosing to live out the most authentic version of myself would mean dismantling a life that we created together, and built over years. There's a song on the album called “Hollow” that's essentially a breakup song, and I was writing that long before I realized that that would be the outcome. If I listen to it now, it feels like a premonition—like I was predicting the future—without realizing it.

QN: I feel like in these times of major life transitions, your community can change, or your relationships to the people around you can change. What has that looked like for you, and how have your family and friends been there for you?
LV: I feel incredibly lucky that I am surrounded by really good people—family and friends, especially queer community because when I was going through all of this and processing it, I just had so many friends who I could call up and talk to about it, and people who had similar stories to mine. I knew that I wouldn't be alone in what I was going through, that there were a lot of people who I already had close friendships with who would understand, both the grief side of it, of the end of a certain life and the end of a relationship, even if it wasn't the right thing for either of us. They could understand that grief part of it, but also understand the joy part of finally being able to be my full self and the lifting of that burden that I sort of always carried around without realizing why.

QN: One of the major themes of the album is breaking out of different sorts of loops and cycles. How do you stay out of those loops, and sustain that?
LV: “Close” and “Sucker Punch” are about my relationship to the music industry, and that’s a major theme with releasing this album, of doing it all independently for the first time. Those songs deal more with the cycles of success and disappointments, or feeling dispensable in this industry. Also the way that I would critique myself and find my self-worth in meaningless metrics—whether that's Spotify numbers, or if you're getting playlisted, or if you're landing on any best-of writeups at the end of the year.

Those are things where just being easy on yourself, knowing that I'm sure I will continue to fall into that sometimes, and if that happens, it's okay just try to bring myself back to what I really value in creating music: getting to go on tour and play shows and meet people at shows, or hearing if the album or a song connected with somebody.

QN: As your identity to your queerness and sexuality was transforming and clarifying, I was wondering if there was also clarification or changes in your relationship to your racial and cultural identity as well?
LV: I would say less change there, but I do think it's something that is close to my heart at all times, something I do think about. And I have explored those themes through songwriting in the past—particularly around just never really knowing where I fit in, and some of that having to do with being mixed race, but then also predominantly growing up in white communities.

Also, I think there's a lot to each side of my family's history and generational trauma and experiences. On my Japanese side, my grandma was born in the states, and went to an internment camp with her family, like every other Japanese American at the time. And on my dad's side, he and his family emigrated from Cuba when he was a child, and that is more of this lost story, because he passed away when I was a kid, and everybody on that side of the family, which was a lot smaller to begin with, is gone. So there's a bit of a gap in knowing, really, who I am on that side. That has maybe been less of a recent development and more of an ongoing thing for me, just wanting to continue to learn more about that, and as I do that, realizing that I learn more about myself.

QN: Was your family on your Japanese side pretty open about internment? I was just listening to a podcast with a poet named Brandon Shimoda, and a lot of his poetry is rooted in his family's history of internment and getting into historical archives about internment, and he was talking about how many Japanese American artists and writers are trying to learn about internment because they weren’t told about it very much growing up.
LV: It's interesting, I kind of do see some of that. There's an openness to talk about it, but it's in such a matter-of-fact kind of way that there's still a lot missing in my understanding. My grandma, for example, is 99 now. So at this point, she's not super capable of sitting down and really having a conversation about that. But in years past, we've, as a family, gotten her and her siblings together and recorded them talking about it. So it's not that there's an unwillingness to talk about it, but it still feels kind of mysterious to me. Like, “Do you remember what it felt like, was it terrifying? To have everything taken from you and to be put in these camps and sleeping in bunk beds?”

I'm wondering if there is some sort of survival coping mechanism of, “assimilate and just move on with our lives, and what happened is in the past,” you know? It sort of feels like there's some of that going on, too. Whereas for me, I wasn't there, but I'm outraged to even think about my grandma and her family and everyone else being pulled out of their homes and sent to these camps. So it's just very interesting, and I'm curious if that's more of a collective thing, or if it's unique to my family.

A woman with medium-length dark hair sits on a wooden table against a dark background, wearing a green jacket and black skirt. One leg is bent up on the table. Green leafy branches hang in the top left corner.

Mini Trees' album "Slow It Down," led singer-songwriter Lexi Vega to some big life changes.

Seannie Bryan

QN: You mentioned the challenge of wanting to explore your dad's story, but not having him there, or his family to share that. How do you approach that?
LV: I think there's some shared stories that have been kind of passed down. My mom, for example, has a decent amount of stories that she heard from my dad, or from his parents, or something. There are still people in my life who have access to some more of that. Otherwise, it's probably similar to the internment camp conversation of just learning more about what was going on more broadly at that time. I would love to visit Cuba at some point. My sister went a few years ago. I think even that would be amazing to picture my dad's childhood there.

Published on May 4, 2026