Julien Baker recorded devastatingly personal songs in an empty university practice room and uploaded them to Bandcamp for a few friends, only to wake up months later to New York Times acclaim calling her work heartbreaking and hypnotic. This deep dive traces how she balanced a devout Baptist upbringing with her queer identity and navigated addiction through the disciplined world of Straight Edge punk.

From her lo-fi debut Sprained Ankle and the crushing solitude of loop-pedal performances to the full-band explosion of Little Oblivions, Baker proved that the louder her music got, the healthier she became. We follow her into the supergroup Boygenius, its Grammy-winning success, and her surprising 2025 country pivot with Torres.

• How her father’s work building experimental prosthetics shaped her ethos of resilience
• Why Straight Edge punk offered a sober lifeline the church could not
• The psychological weight of performing alone with only a loop pedal
• How Boygenius became a survival mechanism rather than a commercial pivot
• Boygenius performing in full drag in Tennessee in response to anti-drag legislation