Whether alone or someday together (a joint tour is the holy grail for their fanbase), one thing is clear: Emma Rosie and Demi Hawks are not fleeting trends. They are the whispered beginning of a new canon—artists who remind us that the most radical thing a young woman can do in 2026 is be unflinchingly, messily, gloriously real. Seek out the unofficial “Sad Girl Starter Pack” playlist on Spotify, curated by fans, which alternates Rosie’s “Lighthouse” with Hawks’ “Concrete Angel.” Just keep tissues nearby.
Neither artist entertains the rivalry. In fact, when Rosie was asked about Hawks in a recent NME interview, she smiled. “Demi scares me in the best way. She writes like someone who has nothing left to lose. I write like someone who’s afraid of losing everything. Same coin, different sides.” emma rosie, demi hawks
Her stage presence is volcanic. During a recent performance of her track “Spite,” she dismantled her own drum kit mid-song, handed the snare to a fan, and finished the track using only a broken cymbal and a megaphone. The audience wept and moshed in equal measure. Whether alone or someday together (a joint tour
Lyrically, Hawks is a poet of the digital age’s loneliness. Her song “DM Slide” isn’t a love song—it’s a forensic takedown of performative intimacy, set to a beat that sounds like a dying Game Boy. Meanwhile, the piano-driven ballad “Social Housing” chronicles her childhood with a chilling simplicity: “The walls had mold / But they held / Better than the people.” Neither artist entertains the rivalry
Hawks, upon hearing this, laughed. “Emma is the sister I never had. She makes you feel held. I make you feel seen. There’s room for both.” Emma Rosie is currently in seclusion in a remote cabin in Washington state, recording her debut full-length album with producer Blake Mills (Perfume Genius, Fiona Apple). Rumors suggest a more electric, percussive sound—what Rosie calls “folk music that kicks the door down.”
Demi Hawks, meanwhile, is writing a short film and scoring a BBC drama about queer joy in the 1980s coal miners’ strikes. “Songs are too small a container for me now,” she says. “I want to build worlds.”
“I used to think songs had to be grand,” Rosie says over a grainy Zoom call, her vintage flannel hanging off one shoulder. “Then I realized the most devastating thing you can say is just, ‘You said forever, but you meant next Tuesday.’ ”