Julia Wolf Releases New Single “Loser” Taken From Upcoming New Album Pressure Out May 23 Via AWAL
Rising indie pop artist Julia Wolf has unveiled her high octane new single “Loser” - listen here and watch the video here. The video, directed by Julia with Tanner Barry, depicts a messy night in Vegas, matching the track’s chaotic vibe being sonically energetic, yet paired with deeply honest lyrics. The new track comes as “In My Room”, the track that launched Wolf into the spotlight with a #1 spot on the Viral US Charts, celebrates 23 million streams to date and a freshly remixed version from rising UK DJ and Producer, Badger - listen here.
Of today’s new single, Julia says “”Loser” is probably one of the most honest songs I’ve written. It’s about how dark your mind can get when you’re in love with someone you don’t feel good enough for. I talk about “chugging NyQuil” because that’s how low my self-worth felt at the time. It’s the pure struggle of obsession and devotion - constantly overthinking, terrified one wrong move will make them leave. That’s why there are all those unsent texts in the notes app - it’s all the things I couldn’t say out loud.”
Last month, Julia released “Jennifer’s Body”. Alternative Press called out the single’s “soulful vulnerability” and the song borrows its title from Diablo Cody’s cult classic black comedy (which itself was named after the incredibly dark Hole song).
Julia Wolf has been feeling the pressure. So much so that the emotive, expressive, genre-fluid singer-songwriter has named her new sophomore album exactly that. The Long Island-born, Los Angeles-based Wolf’s instinctive pop sensibilities have a way of shining through even her darkest sonic inclinations, attracting a steady stream of fans and industry followers and Pressure is an enrapturing journey through dualities - a celebration of dark meets light, of piercing pain that leads to relief and catharsis. On May 23 Wolf will release her new album Pressure via AWAL. Produced by Scro with additional production and input from Cody Tarpley (KREWELLA, Siiickbrain), Lynn Gunn (PVRIS), and others, the record is an enrapturing journey through dualities - a celebration of dark meets light, of piercing pain that leads to relief and catharsis. Never a stranger to getting vulnerable on record, Pressure was born out of necessity. After the release of her 2023 trap-pop-inflected breakthrough Good Thing We Stayed, Wolf felt under siege by ‘shoulds’ coming from the industry. She should have achieved more by now. She should look a certain way. She should stick to a prescribed sound even if it doesn’t represent where she is as an artist. “I wasn’t feeling seen or accepted,” Wolf says. “So I wanted this album to really express the emotions that came with that: the soft doubt, the lack of confidence, the comparing myself to literally everyone that breathes. This was my chance to really lay it all out and be the most honest I’ve ever been.”
The album’s cover captures this contrast, showing a woman serenely dangling from a lush tree by body-suspension hooks. “It just perfectly sums up the kind of pressure that I’m feeling,” says Wolf. “There’s a little blood, but it’s clear that her suspension is almost a way of feeling better.”
Pressure is rawer, heavier, and grittier — swan-diving through emo and shoegaze, metallic textures, and shredded electronics, and putting her evocative Evanescence-inspired vocals to work over an always shifting soundscape of feelings-first music. “It's called Pressure for a reason,” says Wolf. But while lesser artists might buckle under the weight, Wolf feels it differently: “Pressure is what sets me free.”
Julia just wrapped a North American tour supporting Artemas and next month she kicks off her headlining Pressure World Tour that will include stops in Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Boston, and Nashville. Wolf will also head to Europe and the UK for headline dates later this summer, plus supporting PVRIS. See below for a full list of tour dates and find tickets HERE.
Julia Wolf Tour Dates
8th July - Albert Hall, Manchester*
9th July – KOKO, London*
10th July – Oslo, London
11th July – 2000Trees Festival
*Supporting PVRIS
The accompanying stunning picture for “Loser”, shot by Natasha Austrich (below), features insects crawling on her face, a stark visual contrast with the polished beauty of her music. Julia explains, “the juxtaposition of beauty and the grotesque is so captivating. There’s an element of softness within the ugly that keeps me from looking away. I think when it comes to my music, I also try to pair that same contrast inside my songs. Whether it be dark lyrics or songs that start soft and go heavy, it all goes back to the idea of being more than just ‘one thing,’ hence why Pressure is a fusion of many genres.”
Music has long been that safe space for Wolf. Despite growing up in Long Island in a big Italian family, she’d shrink outside of the home, and was so shy at school that she would hide out in the music room during lunchtime. Seated at the piano, though, Wolf found her voice little by little. In high school, a prescient teacher barred her from returning to the annual talent show unless she agreed to perform an original song. She did, and the experience was revelatory. While attending the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, Wolf learned both modern and traditional methods, studying songwriting and taking a gap year for classical piano. Though instructors encouraged her to become a concert pianist, Wolf’s heart lay within the boundaryless world of DIY. Another truism that’s followed Wolf since early days: “Whenever I sense that people are trying to lump me into certain crowds or directions, I instinctively feel the need to prove everyone wrong.”
Wolf gloriously subverted expectations when she released the first taste of Pressure last year — a slowly building, hard-riffing, and bracingly honest ballad called “In My Room,” where the singer aches for companionship in her own inimitable way: “I want your things in my room / I miss you all of the time / I stalk myself on the internet / Just to see what you’ll find.” As Wolf puts it, “The song is really about the obsessive state I can get in when the one person who I want to see me is not seeing me. It just drives me insane internally and gets me thinking really crazy thoughts.”
She’s never been a stranger to getting vulnerable on record. Or sharing her darkest impulses, as on the howling opener, “Kill You Off,” which evolves in lockstep with Wolf’s emotional journey — from brightly glitchy D’n’B to squealing metal — as she imagines ridding herself once and for all of a negative influence. She coos sweetly at first before ending the song in a hail of full-body screams. “I’m talking about how I would travel to the end of the earth to destroy this person, and using the sonic palette to support that,” says Wolf of her holistic approach. “That’s why it gets so heavy. I’m yelling my face off to emphasise how much I really need this person out of my life.”
Elsewhere, Wolf releases a more broadly felt sort of pressure, pushing back against societal beauty standards, while also challenging her existing insecurities around love. Backed by thick riffs and transcendent melodies, the intensely defenceless “Jennifer’s Body” features a sing-along chorus that will feel instantly relatable to anyone prone to self-comparison. “I have this issue where it doesn't matter how much love someone is giving me,” Wolf admits. “I will see someone beautiful and think, ‘That’s who they should be with.’”
Comparison takes a fresh form on the shape-shifting thrasher “Pearl,” which finds Wolf howling into the abyss as she tells off a copycat artist: “You’re such an actress pretending you still have this / Your sh*t is average, on the low you can’t get past this.” It’s one of several moments on Pressure where the secret confidence that powers Wolf’s career — as a staunchly DIY creator whose hands on with every aspect of her output from the music to the artwork — comes to the surface. A refreshing flex from a woman who used to be too bashful to speak to her peers.
As Wolf prepares to release Pressure and kick off its accompanying headlining tour, she’s a little bit terrified, but mostly thrilled, to share her innermost thoughts with an ever-growing audience who can no doubt relate — who among us hasn’t been told what to do, how to look, who to be? By taking that familiar pressure and using it as fuel for her restless, contrarian creative engine, Wolf offers up her most compelling vision yet: an artist who has never been more herself.