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"   Photo: Zel-Atif Ishak  Yuna should be exhausted, but the singer is all hot-pink lipstick and fits of giggles on Friday afternoon. We&amp;#039;re sitting in the lobby of the Standard Hotel lobby, where she&amp;#039;s currently staying on her press-heavy trip to New York. On the heels of Tuesday&amp;#039;s release of her buzzed-about self-titled album, it&amp;#039;s no wonder everyone wants a piece of the singer. But sitting comfortably on an over-sized couch, the Malaysian beauty is soft-spoken and entourage-free. Her flawless complexion glows (courtesy of Olay products and moisturizing, she shyly reveals) and we quickly bond (and Instagram) like BFFs over our matching outfits: leather jackets, black skinnies and Converse sneakers with a pop of pastel,\u2014mine, a vintage sweater, and hers, a patterned head-wrap, which has quickly become both her signature piece and a bad hair-day remedy. &amp;quot;I sometimes have bad head-wrap days though,&amp;quot; she admits with a quiet laugh. In a Top 40 world mostly dominated by the aesthetically and sonically loud-and-proud mega pop star types, the anti-frills 25-year-old fits somewhere between the world&amp;#039;s most famous heartbroken-songstresses, Adele and Lana Del Rey\u2014if, of course, their heartbreak was optimistic and they played the ukulele. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like living a day in a fun pastel-colored world filled with macaroons and cupcakes!&amp;quot; Yuna says when asked about her sound. She cites a slew of &amp;#039;90s singer-songwriter types like Fiona Apple and the Cardigans as influences, and her smokey pipes would cover the Cardigan&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Lovefool&amp;quot; perfectly, but it was her cover of that other &amp;#039;90s classic, Nirvana&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Come As You Are,&amp;quot; that turned her into a viral hit. Yuna&amp;#039;s penchant for the &amp;#039;90s was tamed by Pharrell Williams, who produced her eponymous album. &amp;quot;I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into, but he made me realize I was capable of making music that was different from what I was so used to doing,&amp;quot; she says. But no matter how far she strays from her singer songwriter roots, Yuna hopes her music continues to send the same message: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s important to me that whenever someone listens to my album to feel good about their self, and if they&amp;#039;re going through a rough time, that they will be more positive about things after listening to my music.&amp;quot; Click through to listen\u2014we promise you will.      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/news/a8986/welcome-to-yunas-universe-41698/?click=smart&kw=ist&src=smart&mag=ELM&link=-SMT-ELM>