Rowena Wise

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. Raised in the surf town of Margaret River, Western Australia, Wise was immersed in music from the outset. Her father, a luthier, built her guitars by hand, and her mother—a Chicago-born folk musician—instilled a deep reverence for songcraft and storytelling. After touring as part of a family band in her youth, she moved to Melbourne at 18 to forge her own artistic path. Since emerging in 2018 with her debut single ‘Diary’, Wise has amassed over 9.2 million streams and earned airplay across triple j, double j and Unearthed. Subsequent releases, including ‘F**ked Up Over You’ and ‘To Pretend’, cemented her as one of Australia’s most compelling new voices in indie music, while her collaboration ‘No Cure For Love’ with Didirri further showcased her gift for raw, intimate songwriting. Signed to Beloved Records & 22TWENTY.