Sea Lemon’s Shoegaze Captivates Ben Gibbard, Seattle, and Beyond

A Deeper Listen

Natalie Lew, also known as Sea Lemon, released her debut album Diving for a Prize in June 2025 on Luminelle Recordings. Across 12 songs, reverb-heavy guitars wash underneath vocals that allude to made-up stories and unhealthy obsessions. For example, “Stay” draws inspiration from the real-life antics of an elderly security guard at a thrift store while “Rear View” pulls from Lew’s original fiction about a naive baseball player’s failing career. She proudly likens her sound to shoegaze pioneers Cocteau Twins.

KEXP’s Roddy Nikpour talks with Sea Lemon about launching her music career in New York and moving back to her hometown of Seattle. She has since opened for American Football in two sold-out shows and collaborated with Northwest music legend Ben Gibbard — all within five years of picking up a guitar for the first time.

“I was an insanely big Death Cab fan as a kid,” Lew says in the interview. “Ben reached out to me over Instagram. Somehow, he had found my music outside of realizing the fact that I was in Seattle. Then we played a show together, and we did a song together, ‘Crystals,’ which was the first song that I recorded for my album. It all came together so funnily, and it felt like the smallest world.”

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Photo Credit: Rachel Bennett

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