Some songs are polished. Some are packaged. But Insidious, the third posthumous release from late New York soul/pop powerhouse Lael Summer, is neither. It’s raw. It’s unfiltered. And it cuts like truth.
Released via The Lael Project to mark Mental Health Awareness Month, Insidious pulls no punches. The track is a guttural scream from the margins, a chillingly intimate self-portrait of Lael’s battle with depression, suicide ideation, and eating disorders.
Written and demoed on her iPhone just weeks before her tragic death at age 24, Lael’s original vocal—fragile, fiery, and unflinching—has been restored and elevated by longtime collaborators Tomás Doncker and James Dellatacoma.
And the result? A devastatingly honest track that feels less like a song and more like a soul transmission. Tomás Doncker explains:
We built a track that supports Lael’s vision. She already had all of the lyrics when we started writing the tune, and the mysterious and darkly brooding atmosphere was already quite evident. Lael was surely no stranger to intensity as far as her lyrical/melodic choices were concerned – always choosing to approach the subject matter of all her songs head on. Fearlessly.
Lael’s early career was turning heads for that very reason. She didn’t play coy with emotion—she bulldozed it. But Insidious isn’t a flex. It’s a mirror. It’s Lael laying bare the cyclical torment of mental illness—the illusion of stability, the quiet return of despair, and the shame that tries to silence it all.
Lael’s mother Marla Mase, who launched The Lael Project in 2024 to honour her daughter’s wish to “help just one person“, says:
By sharing Lael’s story / our story (mental illness is a family ‘disease’), we hope it will give others the inspiration and courage to share their own. To let them know that they are not alone and that it is OK to open up, to speak and that there is no shame or judgement in what they are experiencing. There are billions of u out here ready to listen and to connect and that perhaps together we can pave a way towards healing. I am a firm believer in the power of storytelling. It is a path, I am sure, out of the darkness.
The project continues Lael’s mission: to use music, storytelling, and raw honesty as tools for connection and healing.
Since its founding, The Lael Project has championed open, stigma-shattering dialogue around suicide, eating disorders, depression, and more. Marla, an artist and writer herself, sees storytelling as a revolutionary act:
‘Insidious’ is not just a song, it’s a call for compassion and a mirror for the millions who struggle with the emotional instability and unreliability that comes with having a mental illness. I believe those struggling with mental health will see themselves in this song. You feel you have it under control and then suddenly you don’t. It’s back, full force. Lael would call this insidiousness ‘the murderer’ living in her brain. It helped her personify it, to understand that it was not ‘her’, it was the illness. One of the symptoms of mental illness is to isolate, to make you feel hopeless and defective, a burden, and this song is outing those lies. Lael was not afraid to sing about what she was dealing with, she needed to do it, to express all her fears. She was fearless in that way – brutally honest lyrics about her experiences. She did it for her survival and she did it with the hope that her story would help others recognise themselves, know that they aren’t alone and to seek help.
‘Insidious’ is a hand reaching out through the dark saying ‘I Hear You, you are not alone’ – it’s Lael, still helping just one person, maybe more.