After spending much of her time writing about heartbreak and sadness, singer-songwriter nicole han shifts toward exploring dreams, nostalgia and love on her latest EP, There is Magic in This Room.
On Friday, April 10, Han — an independent, DIY and creatively hands-on indie artist — unveiled her newest EP, There is Magic in This Room, a 17-minute exploration of love, loss and of course, magic. The project is very personal and introspective, shaped by her growth after her previous EPs, so it goes… (2023) and Sweet Timing (2024).
The EP opens with Han singing about leading with her heart instead of her head on “LIVING FOR IT ALL.” She sings, “Darling, we’re on fire / We could blow it up, or we could shine bright,” capturing the tension between collapse and connection, and the possibility of either falling apart or lasting forever.
On the next track, “tornado,” Han steps into a more chaotic emotional space, where a complicated relationship unfolds even as she tries to find clarity and peace. Rather than framing heartbreak in simple terms, she places herself inside the storm. She essentially suggests that she is the chaos, while also realizing that someone loved her through it all, regardless.
“tornado” is a deeply introspective indie-pop track that turns emotional instability into something almost painfully self-aware. Instead of focusing on blame or loss, Han writes from inside the storm — naming herself as the chaos while also acknowledging the quiet presence of someone who stays through it. It becomes less about guilt and more about emotional accountability as she sings, “I was the fault line and you were the wave.”
The synth-heavy track “RUN!” continues on a familiarly self-reflective and self-deprecating path. It opens with Han describing how she was doing fine in her own world before the disruption of the “tornado” hits her. She also explores self-destructive tendencies and the impulse to destroy something good, ultimately undoing any emotional stability that came before he came along. “I don’t wanna run! / Think I might drown, slip into the cracks / Baby just this once,” she sings.
Han continues spiraling emotionally about an unfinished love that was never really given a chance on “we never tried.” Instead of mourning a breakup, it’s a loss of “what ifs” and what could have been. She sings, “What if we had tried / Would we have been something real?” A track that fully embodies nostalgia and has-beens, it focuses deeply on that teenage love lost. It’s full of quiet obsession, memory distortion and the way time turns uncertainty into mythology.
While other tracks explore emotional hurt and a past love that could’ve been, the EP shifts with the dreamy indie track “I SEE STARS.” The track is about something more immediate and idealized: the moment you fall in love and believe it is infinite. Han’s perception of things shifts, idealizing a relationship as destiny or fate in an “out of the blue” attraction. It follows the emotional arc set up earlier in the EP — love that complicates and destabilizes. Now she can rebuild. She sings, “Show you I was able / Think that we could make it if you wanted for life.”
The EP ultimately traces how love shifts from magic to chaos to memory distortion, especially in the end. Han lays her heart bare on the final song, “cycles,” an emotional ballad that reflects not only on love but on self-awareness. While still dealing with heartbreak and sadness that lingered on her first two EPs, Han begins to rebuild herself from the ground up, recognizing the patterns she keeps falling into and questioning whether they can ever truly change. She sings, “Will you break the cycle I keep repeating?” It’s a plea for something different, but she also admits that she’s doubtful that the cycle will actually be broken.
