Rising alt-pop artist Julia Wolf has released her new album Pressure via AWAL. The record is a raw and unfiltered dive into the emotional weight of expectations — from the industry, society, and from within. Known for her genre-blurring sound and confessional lyrics, Wolf leans heavier and darker this time, drawing from emo, shoegaze, and metallic textures while staying rooted in her pop instincts. With executive production by Scro and additional production and input from Cody Tarpley (KREWELLA, Siiickbrain), Lynn Gunn (PVRIS), and others, Pressure channels vulnerability into power, confronting self-doubt, comparison, and rejection head-on. From guttural screams to delicate melodies, it’s Wolf’s most fearless and fully realized work to date. Purchase/stream Pressure here.
“It's called Pressure for a reason,” shares Wolf. “Pressure is what sets me free.” The album’s visuals embrace the juxtaposition of beauty and the grotesque, and the cover captures this, showing a woman serenely dangling from a lush tree by body-suspension hooks. “It perfectly sums up the kind of pressure that I’m feeling,” she adds. “There’s a little blood, but it’s clear that her suspension is almost a way of feeling better. 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.”
Wolf kicks off her “Pressure World Tour” on May 29th, which will include a mix of headline dates - several of which are sold-out - and shows supporting Halsey in the U.S. and PVRIS in the UK and Europe. Julia will also complete a sold out headline show at Oslo Hackney in London on 10th July. All dates are listed below, and you can find tickets HERE.
The album follows the breakout success of Julia’s single, “In My Room” which hit #1 on the U.S. Viral Charts and has racked up over 31 million streams to date. Today, Wolf has also shared the official music video for the track. Not only that, she recently collaborated with MGK for their take on The Goo Goo Dolls’ “iris” which has 1.2M views on the video so far and over 1.4M streams. Leading to the release of Pressure, Wolf teased the album with two singles - “Jennifer’s Body” (Alternative Press called out the single’s “soulful vulnerability”) and “Loser.”
Watch the video for “In My Room” here:
Watch the video for “Jennifer’s Body” here:
Watch the video for “Loser” here:
Julia Wolf UK/EU Tour Dates
June 29 - Markthalle Hamburg - Hamburg, HH
July 1 – Hole44 - Berlin
July 2 - Technikum - Munich SOLD OUT *
July 3 - Rock Werchter - Werchter
July 5 - Die Kantine - Cologne SOLD OUT *
July 6 - La Maroquinerie - Paris SOLD OUT *
July 8 - Albert Hall - Manchester SOLD OUT *
July 9 - KOKO - London SOLD OUT *
July 10 - Oslo Hackney - London SOLD OUT
July 11 - 2000 Trees Festival - Cheltenham
* PVRIS
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.
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.”
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 emphasize 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” borrows its title from Diablo Cody’s cult classic black comedy (which itself was named after the incredibly dark Hole song) and 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 who’s 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.
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Photo Credit: Angelo Kritikos