With her debut album DUST and titular music video, Tibetan singer-songwriter YESHE introduces a new kind of diva—rooted in diaspora, fueled by defiance, and cloaked in unapologetic glamour. Raised in Switzerland as the daughter of the first exiled Tibetan immigrants to arrive there, and now living between New York and Zürich, YESHE moves through languages, borders, and eras with magnetic command. Her voice haunts like memory, her visuals strike like protest.

Co-created by a vanguard cast including Palmistry, FaltyDL, Asma Maroof, Chino Amobi, and Dreamcrusher, with the help of Albright Fashion Library’s Patricia Black,  DUST unspools like a sonic odyssey through exile, grief, ritual, and resistance where ‘80s synthpop, Tibetan mantras, and cybernetic club beats collide. In the music video for lead single “Dust,” YESHE transforms a sterile bureaucratic landscape into a catwalk of subversion, sweeping through it like Grace Jones reincarnated via corporate siren chic.

DUST is a devotional offering to the invisible labor of survival, with YESHE honoring her ancestors by channeling them. She shares a Tibetan saying with me: “even dust, when gathered, becomes a mountain.” With DUST, she’s building hers.

To mark the album and music video premiere, Document sat with YESHE to talk inspiration, immigration, and reclamation.

Adnan Qiblawi: Your song “Dust” is really an earworm. I’ve had the lyrics “It’s too heavy, there’s too many” stuck on loop in my head. As a Palestinian, I am drawn to how your song addresses diaspora and oppressed cultures. Can you tell me about your inspiration?

YESHE: Living in diaspora, I’m always navigating between languages, between expectations and incomplete versions of homes. Growing up in diaspora means holding multiple truths at once. I think my music reflects that tension, that mix of clarity and chaos and power and fear and hope and loss. I’m interested in glamour that doesn’t apologize, where every gesture says, “I’ve come a long way, and I know who I am, and I’m not asking.”

Adnan: When I watched you in the video, I immediately thought of Grace Jones. Was she a reference for you?

YESHE: I mean, she is the ultimate gracious and glamorous person, and her attitude is so empowering. I grew up watching women carry entire worlds with grace. This song, and I think this album, is a way of honoring them. That’s why I use the word dust: it might feel kind of small, but for me, it’s powerful, because dust moves, it spreads, and it doesn’t ask for permission. I think Grace Jones carries that attitude too. There’s this Tibetan saying: “Even dust, when gathered, becomes a mountain.”

Adnan: That’s beautiful. What does that saying mean to you?

YESHE: Dust is kind of what remains when everything else disappears—it’s memory, it’s aftermath, and it’s resistance. In Tibet, throwing tsampa or barley up to the sky is a celebratory gesture that looks like dust. I think there’s something radical about showing up with presence and elegance and command, especially when the world always expects you to be invisible or small.

Adnan: Your look in the video is an iteration of the corporate siren aesthetic, which seems to be a recurring theme in pop culture right now. What’s the significance of that corporate setting for you?

YESHE: It’s about moving through controlled spaces, through systems and offices and borders and visa offices where, as an immigrant, you’re expected always to shrink yourself and bow down. I’m interested in what it looks like or how it feels when you show up fully and grand in those places that are actually made to control you. I wanted to give that energy of this person controlling the room instead of the opposite. She swifts through the room making it her space. Living in diaspora and as an immigrant, you’re always used to these rooms.

Adnan: I know those rooms very well. How does this connect to your family’s immigration history? Are you referring to that history when you sing the refrain “it’s too heavy”?

YESHE: My parents were among the first 60 Tibetan immigrants to Switzerland in 1960. China occupied Tibet in 1959. In my family, like in so many others, there are political prisoners. My grandmother and my uncle were both imprisoned. When I sing, it’s like I’m writing through that history. I’m saying: I’m captured, I’m confined—trapped between these four walls—but my mind is escaping, because it’s powerful. When I repeat ‘it’s too heavy, there’s too many,’ it could be the weight of my own thoughts, or it could be the reality of people still imprisoned. It’s both internal and external. But still, the song carries hope.