Announced: Rowena Wise – Bad Things Feel Good* + ‘Diamond In The Rough’

Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Rowena Wise announces her sophomore album, Bad Things Feel Good*, set for release on Friday 7th August, 2026, and shares her new single ‘Diamond In The Rough‘, out now. The announcement follows her recent return with ‘Blood Ties’, a song that confronted inherited silence and the emotional architecture of family, signalling the arrival of a body of work that deepens everything that has made Wise one of Australia’s most compelling voices in indie songwriting.

Where ‘Blood Ties‘ examined the costs of emotional restraint within family, ‘Diamond In The Rough’ turns its gaze toward the darker side of being seen as exceptional, the loneliness of standing on a pedestal you didn’t entirely choose, and the quiet pressure to remain impressive at all costs. Wise shares, “The idea came after watching a close friend move through an identity crisis. She placed enormous pressure on herself to be extraordinary, to be the most captivating, the most accomplished, the most desired. But when she inevitably fell short of her own impossible standards, she felt alienated and ashamed. The song is an invitation to step down from that self-made pedestal, to pause, to let yourself unravel a little, and to reach toward others on equal footing. We don’t have to be extraordinary to be worthy. We are not special, we are simply enough.”

Speaking on the music video, Rowena shares; “Diamond in the Rough is about the pressures of being told that you’re special from a young age, creating an unattainable standard you must maintain. In this dance, I am exploring the idea of internal isolation and external performance, highlighting the dissonance caused by those standards set by the self. We shot the video in a semi-abandoned warehouse apartment late one Saturday night, improvising most of the dance and camera movements to retain a sense of character rather than a neat dance routine. The concept was inspired by a scene in The Last Showgirl (2024) where Jamie Lee-Curtis’ character dances in a busy Vegas casino, ignored by passers-by, dejectedly performing slow, powerful dance movements. We aimed to create something similarly melancholic and beautiful – the song’s themes of performance of the self lean into something glamorous, yet dark and human.” watch here.

Musically, the track builds on the understated intensity of Wise’s recent work, balancing driven instrumentation with moments of quiet vulnerability, anchored by her signature poetic storytelling and delivered with the kind of emotional clarity that has earned her praise from FLOOD, CLASH Magazine, Rolling Stone AU, and triple j.

Bad Things Feel Good* is a tender, point-blank look at the pain of transformation, and what it means to be flesh and blood. It defines love and selfhood as a mosaic of light and dark, where the rules of negotiating desire, responsibility, devotion, and self-authenticity no longer hold. Through candid poetic lyricism and raw live band production, the songs explore themes of heartbreak, estrangement and mental health, grounding the complexities of the human experience with relatability and emotional depth.

Written over the last couple of years of Wise’s extensive touring schedule, the album was carved out of her own and her friends’ experiences of navigating the nuances of complicated relationships and mental health. The feeling of displacement that came with travelling so often allowed her some perspective on the knottier growing pains of adulthood, love that deviates, longing that is existential, and moral vertigo. Wise wrote the album from a place of exploring intimacy in its many forms, romantic, familial, communal, and the quiet inheritances we carry from them.

Where Wise’s previous album, Senseless Acts of Beauty (2024), explored love, loss and the slow rebuilding of self, shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize and described by CLASH Magazine as “carefully etched indie folk”, this record traces the uncomfortable in-between, the knowing and the unknowing, the harm and the pleasure, the tenderness and the damage that can exist in the same breath. There are parents who loved imperfectly, partners who loved too much or not enough, and selves that are slowly shedding old skins. Again and again, the characters in these songs are caught between what feels good and what is good, asking whether growth must always arrive through suffering, and whether love can exist without possession, silence, or sacrifice.

Wise reflects, “I thought I had metabolised the growing pains of adulthood in the last decade. In reality, I’ve been wobbling on a pedestal of ‘overcoming’ that I created. I have been careless with my heart, dishonest to myself about what I want and who I am. Now I don’t know who I am, but I do know that I just want to be human, to be at peace with the messiness of life without continuing to try to tell a clean, novel story about it.”

Produced by Rob Muinos (Julia Jacklin, Didirri) and recorded at The Ratshack in Collingwood over three days with a live band, Richard Bradbeer on bass, Jess Ellwood on drums and Matt Dixon on pedal steel guitar, the album holds space rather than demands attention. Their tight, organic instrumentation moves with patience and restraint, allowing Wise’s live vocal captures to soar, then crumble in the delicate moments.

At its core, Bad Things Feel Good* is not a confession or a redemption arc. It is an honest reckoning with complexity. It acknowledges the mess, the legacy of blood ties, the weight of attachment, the seduction of self-betrayal, while refusing to flatten human experience into neat conclusions. Bad Things Feel Good* invites you to stand at the edge of something, looking back at who you were, forward at who you might become, and down into the uneasy space where desire, love, and truth collide.

Pre-save / pre-order Bad Things Feel Good* here.
Stream / download ‘Diamond In The Rough’ here.

Rowena Wise – Tour Dates

Friday 29th May – The Junk Bar, Brisbane/Meanjin QLD (with Charlotte Meade)

Friday 5th June – Low 302, Sydney/Eora  NSW (with Beryl)

Saturday 6th June – Shotkickers, Melbourne/Naarm VIC (with Danika)

Tickets and further tour details at rowenawise.com