Sarah Julia: the folk sister duo finding magic and possibility in change

When Sarah Julia arrived in Woodstock to record their debut album ‘The Fear That This Is Real’, they drove past a red maple tree. “It’s like it was bleeding,” Julia Nauta, one half of the sibling folk duo, says, recalling the crimson leaves burning bright against a fading autumnal backdrop. On their final day upstate, only a week later, they passed the tree again, only to find its branches bare. “It felt very symbolic”, she adds, as if somehow its fleeting, final burst of beauty had been the physical embodiment of all the things they had left behind on tape.

It’s a year later when they speak to NME, and the seasons are once again in transition. The album is out now, and the sisters are back home in Amsterdam, having just touched down from a US tour with former NME Cover artist Mon Rovîa. These days, they’re often on the road, and in the past couple of years have opened for Paris Paloma, Faye Webster and even Neil Young. But before they became regulars on festival stages and in support slots for music greats, it was in the theatre that they first crept into the spotlight.

Sarah Julia on The Cover of NME. Credit: Paul Bellaart for NME

They grew up in Rotterdam, in a home soundtracked by Cat Stevens and Jim Croce. Sarah was born first – three years ahead of Julia – and is every bit the typical big sister: calm and reserved beside Julia’s self-described “chaos”. Naturally, she was the first to take to the stage, with Julia initially watching in awe from the front row before eventually daring to take the leap herself. As teenagers, they performed in musicals, TV shows and movies in the Netherlands before entering a TV songwriting contest where they came in third place. For a while after that, they wrote music individually, before upheaval in their family unit led them to start writing together again.

At first, songwriting offered a way of making sense of their shared childhood. Their first EPs, 2024’s ‘How Do We Go Back To Being Normal?’ and 2025’s ‘Only Making It Worse’, saw them untangle the complexities of their family’s dynamic and the ways it had moulded them. On their album, they take a more separate approach, carving songs from their experiences as individuals rather than one melded unit. Yet blending their perspectives remains an essential part of their creative practice.

“You’re such a big part of my life,” Julia says, gazing at her sister. “If one of us wasn’t there, in the songs, then you’re not seeing the full picture.” They are constantly discussing and contextualising their work, seeking to understand why they each move through the world in the way they do, and what this means for their music. Julia puts this penchant for “overanalysing” down to the fact that their mother is a therapist – a topic which, incidentally, occupies its own song on the album.

Credit: Paul Bellaart for NME

Sarah Julia are among the most vivid voices of the ongoing folk revival and are at the forefront of those nudging the genre forward while also respecting and honouring its history. They are clear students of Joni Mitchell, capturing the unique rhythm of her guitar-playing and the brightness of her voice, while their songwriting holds a vulnerability akin to Adrianne Lenker and their peer Annahstasia. That folk has found such an avid audience in Gen Z is of little surprise to Sarah, who theorises that young people are craving a sincerity that the genre has offered since its inception.

“Folk music can be very vulnerable; I think it helps people to do more inner work and be a bit more silent and introspective,” she says. Julia concurs: “There’s so much shit going on in the world, and you can lean into that aggressive realm, but then there’s also a part of us that just wants to be carried or just feel held. [In folk music] you’re able to shed some tears together.”

The genre’s ability to cradle the listener allows it to frame more painful, even political, themes with a tenderness that makes them easier to fathom. A standout from Sarah Julia’s last EP was ‘Daughters’, a song that traces the most harrowing experiences of girlhood all the way into womanhood: the need to exist in a constant state of fight or flight and the tips for survival that generations of women pass down the way they would heirlooms and advice. “I don’t want to play it safe / I don’t want to hide away / I don’t want to fear having daughters”, the sisters harmonise on the chorus.

“If one of us wasn’t there, in the songs, then you’re not seeing the full picture” – Julia Nauta

On their recent US tour, the song’s place on their setlist became particularly poignant, given the shows took place only weeks after the disturbing details of the Cornell 7 case came to light. “We had to play it,” Julia says, “Afterwards we’d meet people, and they would be thanking us, but I’m also thanking them for sharing that moment with us. It’s empowering to know that we’re doing this together, but then it’s also very sad that we’re all going through the same shit.”

‘Conversation’, a twinkling, Mitchell-indebted track from their new album, follows the same vein, taking aim at those shying away from difficult topics, “who want to live in a world that only benefits them,” Sarah explains. The song also took on a new importance on tour, as they noticed it was predominantly women aghast at the Cornell 7 story and subsequent misogynistic rhetoric surrounding the victim. “We need the men to be loud for us as well, because it’s not just our fight,” she says. “It just feels like we keep coming back to the same problem.” Sharing the pain with other women offers some catharsis, though Sarah points out it won’t mend the wounds. “It does feel healing to play these songs. You need some sort of outlet to just be able to live in this world and be OK with getting out of bed each morning.”

Credit: Paul Bellaart for NME

While their previous EPs consider this weight of the everyday more closely, ‘The Fear That This is Real’ begins by zooming out and pondering more existential themes: why are we here? What does it all mean? It’s also simply folkier, shedding the poppier inflexions of their previous music and conjuring an earthiness that seems rooted in a place entirely foreign to the perpetual flatness of their native Netherlands. Their music recalls mountains, forests, canyons and creeks, and it takes on a tone of ancient folklore: mystical and occasionally eerie in their otherworldly harmonies and use of more traditional instrumentation.

The album was helmed by Philip Weinrobe, the producer behind Lenker’s straight-to-tape ‘Bright Future’, as well as other equally live-sounding records from Florist and Hand Habits. Weinrobe enlisted a roomful of musicians who had never heard of Sarah Julia to collaborate on the album, making the recording process an exercise in improvisation and trust, far from the familiarity of creating within the shelter of a sibling relationship. They were forced to be present, sitting each day in a circle with the complete strangers who would bring their songs to life.

At times, Sarah says, they were unaware when recording had begun. “You’re able to connect on such a deeper level when you play music together, so as soon as we played that first song it was like we all knew each other,” she explains. “The musicians really weren’t afraid of being there with us and going through the stories we were trying to tell.” As a result of Weinrobe’s analogue approach, the record crackles with life, each fingerpick of a guitar and quiet breath a reminder of the human effort that went into it.

Credit: Paul Bellaart for NME

A nostalgic sonic atmosphere paves a warm foundation for stories defined by loss and change. The album was written after the death of a close family member, and it shines in its true, nuanced portrayal of grief – devoid of bleakness and illuminated by a surprising amount of light. Within the album’s first line, “The strange thing about death is how life goes on” on ‘Bigger Picture’, they encapsulate the uncertainty that comes with losing someone you love. How can the stores still open? How do the street lights still come on? As life continues, though, eventually, so do those who have lost.

In line with this truth, the album eventually unfolds to dwell, again, on the ordinary moments that punctuate our lives: difficult relationships, self-sabotage, longing for love. “You want to have space for grief, but there’s no space,” Julia says. “Life just moves fucking on.” But rather than leaning on songwriting as a way to unravel or fix these feelings, Sarah now looks at it as a way to give them “a place” to live on. “It’s like they’re on a shelf, so you can look at them and know they’re there, and that it’s OK. It’s accepting that they’re a part of you as well, even if you don’t want it to be,” she says.

It’s apt that ‘The Fear That This Is Real’ arrives as the Northern hemisphere begins its descent into winter. It unfurls as those maple leaves did: bright and urgent before eventually arriving at a bare, open state of acceptance, in the form of closing track ‘Wishing Stone’. Here, they seek to embrace the unknown and hope there is good in it, wishing that you, also, “find harmony, olives in your tree / Peace in your mind, swallows in your sky”. They’re learning that within the loss, and despite the discomfort of the cold, there is a sense of possibility that is eternally enticing. “We’re all scared of change,” Julia says. “But we shouldn’t be. We’ve found a lot of beauty and magic in it.”

Sarah Julia’s ‘The Fear That This Is Real’ is out now via Nettwerk.

Listen to Sarah Julia’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.

Words: Laura Molloy
Photography: Paul Bellaart
Styling: Georgia Boal-Russell
Hair and Makeup: Sandra Govers
Location: Studio Kalverliefde
Label: Nettwerk Music Group

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