Mini Trees - Burn Out

In the late summer of 2022, Mini Trees’ Lexi Vega was wrapping up an exceptional year. Her debut album Always in Motion came out while she was on the road supporting Julien Baker in 2021, and she launched into a busy touring schedule, supporting towering fixtures of the indie music world, like Death Cab for Cutie, Thao, Yumi Zouma, and Hovvdy. Suddenly, Mini Trees — a project Vega started on a whim in 2018 — had become a career. But the thing no one talks about with periods of time that are exceptional is that they are often equal parts amazing and draining. When Vega returned home to Los Angeles after almost two years of touring, she found herself tired and dejected. Rarely do musicians talk about the  emotional toll exacted behind the scenes — the energy it takes to connect with audiences night after night in strange towns; the industry’s insistence on synthesizing your identity into something consumable; the struggle to find joy in commodifying the thing you once did purely for lov