Sarah Kinsley’s new EP “Fleeting” review: For all those who yearn

On Friday, Feb. 13th, a day before Valentine’s Day, Sarah Kinsley, an American alternative pop singer-songwriter, released her newest EP “Fleeting.” Calling out to all the “yearners,” Kinsley offers five tracks, each one touching on the topics of unrequited love, heartbreak, and loneliness. 

In this EP, Sarah Kinsley explains in an interview for “Wonderland Magazine” that “every song indulges in a fleeting feeling – something overwhelming and powerful worth trying to get inside of.” 

Known for her song “The King,” which blew up on  TikTok in 2021, it was her beautiful lyricism and ethereal-sounding voice that drew me in and kept me coming back to listen to her debut album, “The Escaper,” released in 2024, and now her newest EP, “Fleeting”. 

Transporting us once again into her world, this time in her interview for “Wonderland Magazine,” she says that she wants us to take from this track “a sense of living deeply, feeling truly aware of the movement.” 

The first song “Lonely Touch,” released as a single on Jan. 9, opens the track by reflecting on the vulnerability of loving and the risk of admitting that love. With a beautiful synth-pop soundtrack and a heavenly-sounding chorus that speaks to all of us, Sarah Kinsley starts her story by immersing us in the reality of what loving often feels like: vulnerable and scary. 

The chorus, “How to say what I want… / How to love and never land,” expresses how love can often feel impossible, especially with the uncertainty of not knowing how the other person feels. The irony in the title is felt throughout the song, echoing the complexity of wanting to be close to someone yet only feeling the empty space between the other.

Her second song “Truth Of Pursuit,” explores the overwhelming intensity of desire and the vulnerability of openly naming who you love with no guarantee that your love will find a home, that it will be received. The first verse speaks directly to all those that have felt the sting of unrequited love: “If only baby, you were mine / I think about it almost every night on the line.” 

Juggling between the desire to convey how we truly feel to someone and the risk of putting your heart out there only for it to be rejected, Sarah Kinsley explores the truth about what it means to truly pursue what you love without knowing the outcome. Yet there is no answer, only feelings that are sometimes too big to feel, too much to name. 

With her next song “Reverie,” Kinsley reflects on the reality of loving someone more than you should, about loving something that has yet to become reality. She takes romanticizing a person and embodies that feeling in her song. Conveying the danger of fantasy through her lyrics, the opening lines: “Hold back when you fantasize… / Imagination is a sacred drug,” reflect that need for restraint and the danger of letting your imagination run rampant. 

Fantasizing about someone can quickly backfire when nothing is promised and feelings are complex. The first two songs build up to “Reverie” making it the turning point in the story Knisley is telling. 

The following song “After All” comes as more of a confirmation. Kinsley is accompanied by the ethereal voice of Paris Paloma in the only collaboration song in her EP. Their voices and lyricism display how, despite how much you might desire and yearn for someone’s love, sometimes that love is left unfelt. 

The ending chorus directly reflects that understanding: “Love is just a man I used to call / You say we were always meant to fall, after all.” 

Some feelings, however intense as they may be, are sometimes just fleeting and maybe some loves inevitably end even though we wish they would stay. “After All” echoes the heartbreak of love not accomplished. A heartbreak song that is not a power ballad but comes more as a realization that love cannot always save us.  

Last but not least, the track ends with “Fleeting,” a beautiful blend of synths and haunting voices, serving as a reminder that much like how love can eventually end, heartbreak isn’t everlasting. Its moving lyrics yet upbeat rhythm and synth-pop track invites us to dance our heartbreak away: a breakup song that doesn’t follow the common trends and patterns as many others do but instead tells us that fleeting isn’t necessarily bad.

It is easy to forget that some feelings, as deep and intense as they may be, can and sometimes will end despite all our attempts and efforts at maintaining them. Kinsley described it in “Diy Magazine” as “a promise to yearn, to long, to feel deeply and truly, despite knowing everything is fleeting.”

So, for all those who have loved or love intensely and without restraint that end up with a broken heart, this EP is a gentle reminder that you are not alone in this feeling and that while that love may have been fleeting, so is the heartbreak.