Rowena Wise

Rowena Wise at Judson & Moore Distillery

Rowena Wise is a Naarm/Melbourne-based singer-songwriter whose work balances beauty and mess with rare emotional precision. Hailed as a "lyrical assassin" by the Australian triple j community, Wise writes songs that feel like intimate conversations-ruminations on love, alienation, longing and selfhood delivered with quiet courage and disarming honesty. Drawing from the storytelling lineage of 60s folk while grounded in indie rock, garage pop and alt-folk, she finds truth in fiction and humanity in contradiction.

As a live performer, Wise commands the stage with understated intensity. Soaring melodies intertwine with purposeful guitar work, her poetic lyricism anchoring each performance. She has supported artists including The Paper Kites, Medium Build, Didirri, Ball Park Music, Holy Holy, Bernard Fanning and Paul Dempsey, and has appeared at festivals such as The Great Escape (UK), SXSW (USA), Queenscliff Music Festival and Party in the Paddock.

Amid a relentless touring schedule, Wise wrote and recorded her highly anticipated sophomore album, Bad Things Feel Good*a tender, point-blank meditation on transformation and what it means to be flesh and blood. Where Senseless Acts of Beauty* explored heartbreak and rebuilding, this new record inhabits the uncomfortable in-between: the knowing and unknowing, harm and pleasure, tenderness and damage coexisting in the same breath.