After a prolific and quietly surprising return to the indie landscape, The Julies open 2026 by leaning fully into reflection. Their new single, “Teenage Sadness,” arrives today alongside a music video that mirrors the song’s emotional pull. It is nostalgic, soft-edged, and glowing with the kind of longing that only reveals itself once you are far enough away from the moment itself.
“Teenage Sadness” feels like a memory you didn’t realize you were still carrying. Built on gauzy guitars and a slow-burn sense of momentum, the track drifts through pensive verses before crashing into a towering, almost pop-forward chorus. It is a sound rooted in the band’s earliest influences, nodding toward the ‘90s wall-of-sound aesthetic that first drew them to music, while still feeling firmly grounded in the present.
There is a conspicuous sense of looking back woven into every part of the song. Guitarist Patrick Zbyszewski describes that instinct as unavoidable. “Our formative years define us as individuals across the board,” he says. “That’s probably especially true as music listeners.” That idea hums beneath “Teenage Sadness,” where memory, melody, and emotion blur together, less concerned with accuracy than with feeling.
For singer Chris Newkirk, the song’s origin lives somewhere between the personal and the communal. “At the time of writing, my family was really into belting out Lana Del Rey’s ‘Summertime Sadness’ in the car,” he recalls. “Meanwhile, I’d fallen in love with Crowded House’s latest single at the time, ‘Teenage Summer.’ Somewhere between those two songs, I ended up with a song title that just screamed single—not to mention some license to keep indulging in the theme of personal nostalgia.”
That sense of shared influence and accidental synthesis defines the track, and it carries through to one of its most striking elements. Olivia Buchholz of Lancaster County synth-pop duo memory stitches lends ethereal backing vocals to the chorus, adding a soft, fairy-pop shimmer that amplifies the song’s ache. Her presence brings an unexpected tenderness to the mix and marks the first time The Julies have featured a female voice on one of their songs.
The collaboration came together naturally. Guitarist Alex Yost became an instant fan after discovering memory stitches, leading to a mutual exchange of admiration. The Julies reimagined one of the duo’s tracks, and in turn invited Olivia to appear on “Teenage Sadness.” The result feels less like a feature and more like a conversation, a blending of voices that deepens the emotional weight of the song.
The accompanying music video leans into that same emotional terrain, pairing understated visuals with moments of quiet intensity. It avoids overt narrative, instead letting atmosphere do the work, much like the song itself. The video feels less like a performance and more like a fragment of memory, slightly out of focus but deeply familiar.
Both nostalgic and newly energized, “Teenage Sadness” captures The Julies at their most evocative. It is a song about youth without trying to relive it, about memory without polishing it smooth. In opening the year this way, The Julies remind us that some feelings never really fade. They just learn new ways to echo.
For The Julies, January has always meant more than a page on the calendar. It marks beginnings, resets, and the moment when something quietly irreversible is set in motion. Their story first flickered to life with January, a six-song cassette released in 1994 that captured the band in raw, unfiltered form—noisy, dreamy, and drenched in the guitar effects of the early nineties. Known to early fans as “the blue tape,” it was rough but undeniable, earning them regular bookings on New York’s Lower East Side, invitations to CMJ and the New Music Seminar, and attention from major labels, including reps sent by Seymour Stein. That early momentum carried the tape to Nashville and Flying Tart Records, leading to Lovelife and, decades later, a cult resurgence sparked by reissues from Lost in Ohio and an unlikely reunion. Now, more than thirty years on, January finally arrives on vinyl for the first time, a limited, DIY-spirited document of a band before they knew what they were becoming. That sense of continuity—of past and present folding into each other—runs through the band’s current chapter, where reflection fuels forward motion, culminating in the upcoming album Cherisher, due out February 27.
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