By Cameron Lee
April 10, 2025
Photo: Jaelin Hilliard
The music of budding 21-year-old bedroom indie rock singer-songwriter Bri Huynh feels like the soundtrack of adolescent heartache and daydreams on an early autumn road trip. The Vietnamese-American songsmith, better known by her stage name briZB, was born in High Point and raised in Lexington. She writes soft-spoken, wistful lo-fi songs reminiscent of Phoebe Bridgers and Beabadoobee, though Huynh’s guitar often swells with shimmering intensity. Her voice conveys the vulnerability of someone keenly observant of her surroundings — timid, curious, and sentimental — feeling lonesome growing up in a small city with very few Asians.
“My songwriting, what I write about, is just how I feel about whatever I’m going through at the time, and usually I can link that back to growing up and being different from everyone else,” Huynh said. “I can write all these songs about how I don’t feel like myself, or I don’t feel very secure in myself. And I think part of that has to do with growing up and feeling different.”
Huynh taught herself ukulele, piano, and guitar at 13, and wrote her first song at 14 after getting her heart broken by a boy. It wasn’t until 2019 that she began releasing originals and covers through a secret Instagram account. A few years passed before she finally mustered the courage and creative energy to upload music to SoundCloud, eventually followed by her debut singles “left” and “right” on Spotify — both written in just a few hours using a single mic and her acoustic guitar in her bedroom.
Encouraged by her friend Ethan King — a musician himself who is now her manager — Huynh began to take her songwriting more seriously.
“He was like, ‘I’m sick of you not doing anything with your music, because you have so much talent. So I’m going to make you do something.’ And that’s how he became my manager,” Huynh said.
Her next single, “tangerines” — the first song mixed and mastered by producer Blake Loggans (frontman of the alternative rock band Flake) — gained traction on TikTok. With its distant, distorted lo-fi guitar riffs reminiscent of a ‘90s Liz Phair or Juliana Hatfield track, the song showcases Huynh’s nectarous voice tinged with teenage angst. Her follow-up, “saturn & stars,” reveals her range through a luminous cosmic folk ballad that juxtaposes the vastness of the universe with the tenderness of human touch and companionship.
Huynh has a gift for stitching together emotions in her songwriting with a lucid yet inviting touch — like slipping under your favorite blanket on a cool spring or summer night.
“I like to fit those lines and verses together, kind of like puzzle pieces… I think when it comes to saying how I feel, it’s usually very blunt… but sometimes, just very relatable.”
While Huynh’s songwriting often stems from feelings of alienation, heartbreak, and yearning, her music carries a consoling quality — one that soothes anxiety and offers quiet companionship. This tender duality is evident in the lead single, “have you thought of me today?,” from her debut EP (rough night?) released in March:
“How much do you really want to see me?
‘Cause I’m lying when I say I could wait all year
Funny how the issue here is distance
Is it mental, physical, emotional?”
The track “emma,” also from the project, recounts an unexpected connection outside Hangar 1819 (formerly The Blind Tiger) in Greensboro. Before a show, the bass player for the emo post-punk band Fish Narc was frantically searching for a replacement bass guitar, having accidentally left theirs at a previous tour stop. By pure chance, Huynh happened to have a bass guitar in her car — and offered it.
“We had a really nice conversation, and she was telling me that if I wanted to make music, then I should never stop. At the time, I was kind of going through a breakup and that conversation really helped me,” Huynh said. “Because it helped me see that not every day was going to be so bleak and that I have so much to look forward to if I just keep going.”
She details the encounter in the song: “I met this cool girl yesterday, and she said the risk is worth everything / So I took her words and ran as far as I could and didn’t stop until I found the wall / that had the greatest of them all.” The lyrics reflect both the spontaneity of the moment and Huynh’s way of turning meaningful interactions into poetic introspection.
“anticancer,” another standout from the EP, showcases Huynh’s ability to craft emotional mini rock sagas. The track begins as a serene bedroom pop tune, laced with delicate guitar work and her own ethereal backing vocals, before swelling into a glimmering indie rock jam.
It’s an impressive debut for Huynh, a music business student at Catawba College. She’s been captivated by Charlotte’s music scene ever since attending her first rock show at the Spoke Easy, where she fell in love with the local indie emo band blankstate. Two of its members — Jacob Juarez (guitar) and Seth Brown (drums) — now play in her backing band. Huynh only began performing live last year, with her first shows at Above Board Skatepark in Greensboro and Provided Coffee in Concord, before making her official Charlotte debut at The Milestone.
Huynh eventually hopes to tour after graduation, but she’s focused on continuing to grow her musical roots right here in North Carolina. With several “songs in the vault,” she’s excited to record and release them at her own pace.
Having grown up in a small town where she often felt isolated, Huynh has found both a safe space and a sense of community, and she’s now hitting her stride. In an industry where Asian women are still underrepresented, her songwriting — which offers solace to those who feel secluded or heartbroken — undoubtedly leaves a lasting impact.
Listen to briZB’s debut EP, rough night?, and follow her on Instagram for updates on her music.
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