Hawks — Emma Rosie, Demi

That line, from her viral single “Tuesday,” has been used in over 500,000 TikTok edits. But unlike many viral stars, Rosie resists the algorithm’s pull. Her live shows are famously silent—audiences recording nothing, just listening. Her recent cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” at a Brooklyn loft show was described by one critic as “a surgical dissection of heartbreak so precise it should require a medical license.”

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.”

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

Though one hails from the fog-soaked folk trails of the Pacific Northwest and the other from the gritty, synth-heavy basements of East London, both artists share a singular mission: to weaponize vulnerability. They are not just singers; they are archivists of the messy, beautiful chaos of young adulthood. If you close your eyes and listen to Emma Rosie’s 2024 breakout EP, Saltwater Stains , you can smell the rust on a fire escape and feel the humidity of a sleepless summer. Rosie, 23, possesses a voice that cracks like old leather—warm, worn, and impossibly honest.

Her rise was accidental. A classical piano prodigy who rejected conservatory at 19, Rosie spent two years working graveyard shifts at a 24-hour diner in Portland, Oregon. She wrote songs on napkins about customers: the trucker who cried into his coffee, the newly single mother counting quarters. That line, from her viral single “Tuesday,” has

“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.’ ”

In an era where streaming algorithms often dictate taste, the quiet revolution happening in the corners of Bandcamp and sold-out intimate club shows feels almost sacred. At the heart of this movement are two women who have never met—yet whose careers mirror each other with uncanny symmetry: Emma Rosie and Demi Hawks . Her recent cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” at

Hawks grew up in the foster system, a fact she refuses to exploit for pathos but cannot separate from her art. “When you’re moved from house to house, you learn that silence is dangerous,” she explains during a chaotic backstage interview before a sold-out show at London’s The Windmill. “So I fill every second. My songs are clutter. They’re the stuff you hide in your closet.”