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  DAN HYMAN  

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Photo courtesy of Lucy Hamblin
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24-year-old Yunalis Zarai could be in Malaysia right now. The singer could be swarmed by paparazzi, unable to leave her home without having her picture snapped. Or perhaps she might be in a law office… after all, she graduated with a J.D. five years ago. Rather, she’s on a Beverly Hills rooftop one recent March afternoon, feeling liberated, free and thoroughly content to be in a place where she’s none of the above… rather, just one more relatively unknown musician trying to make it in a city with no remorse.

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“I love it here,” Zarai, better known as genteel, satin-voiced singer/songwriter Yuna, says with a genuine smile. “It’s calm and people do their own thing.”

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Calm might not be a common descriptor for Los Angeles, but for Yuna  — a bona fide celebrity in her home country — it’s an escape grounded in passion. “A bunch of people (in Malaysia) were like, ‘Why would you want to go (to America)? Your career is big here,’” Yuna recalls. Her response was simple, blunt and honest: “It’s my dream.”

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Yuna always loved music — growing up she idolized Beyonce, joined an all-girl group (“something like Destiny’s Child“) and was the lead singer of a punk-rock band– but had never played solo before picking up a guitar during her teens. She quickly realized her voice had its own sensual character and created a Myspace page. The budding songwriter was hopeful, yet grounded in reality, after penning her first tunes. “It would be cool if someone from the States or London listened to this, and could relate to this,” she remembers thinking after uploading her first song, “Deeper Conversation.” “And they did!”

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After being approached by music big-wigs from Europe and the U.S., Yuna’s learned to stay busy “being a celebrity” on her own turf, that is, when she’s not slaving over perfecting her music. Her acoustic melodies — replete with tingling finger-picking amid her cashmere croon — recall a guitar-wielding Regina Spektor, but Yuna’s not in the mood for comparisons (“You don’t try to copy Christina Aguilera, you know,” she says).

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While on her L.A. escape, busy recording the follow-up to her U.S. debut, Decorate— a 5-song EP of gentle melodies, highlighted by the slow-burning title track— Yuna’s largely been holed up in her downtown apartment, far from the celebrity gossip across the Pacific she usually is slammed with. When asked however, why she once described her music as a “cross between Coldplay and Mary Poppins,” Yuna can only laugh, remembering that these days one can never truly escape their former life.”I can’t believe that came all the way here!” she exclaims, blushing. “I was just making fun of myself.”
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