Watch: Rowena Wise – ‘Blood Ties’

Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Rowena Wise (she/her) returns with her first solo single in two years, ‘Blood Ties’, alongside its accompanying video, watch here. Wise also announces an intimate run of solo shows across Meanjin, Eora, and Naarm in May and June to celebrate the release. Following the success of her debut record Senseless Acts of Beauty (2024), Wise has been hailed as a “lyrical assassin” by triple j, writing songs that feel like intimate conversations: lucid, clear-eyed, and quietly disarming in their honesty.

Written in the wake of a close friend’s mental health crisis, ‘Blood Ties’ turns its gaze toward the private architecture of family, and the costs of emotional restraint. Wise shares: “I wrote ‘Blood Ties’ after a close friend experienced a mental health crisis. In the aftermath, I watched his father struggle to respond, not because he didn’t love his son, but because he didn’t know how to meet him emotionally… In Australia, especially, emotional restraint has long been normalised… But that silence creates space for shame to grow, particularly within families where unspoken pain lingers beneath the surface.”

‘Blood Ties’ confronts what is often left unsaid, giving voice to pain and making a case for speaking, for naming what hurts and rejecting inherited beliefs that cast vulnerability as weakness. It reflects Wise’s instinct for introspection and emotional release, delivered through candid, poetic storytelling that sits between silence and the need to be seen, and moves unflinchingly toward a more honest way of relating. The track is anchored by a driven, understated band groove that mirrors its emotional core, strength held in restraint. As Wise puts it, the work is driven by a need “to tell the truth… in a beautiful way,” leaving listeners “put at ease knowing there is catharsis in acknowledging their own truth.”

With ‘Blood Ties’, Wise returns not with a reinvention, but with a deepening: a new chapter in an ongoing commitment to emotional truth, and to the kind of songwriting that makes room for complexity without losing sight of tenderness. Even at its heaviest, the work insists on the possibility of light, holding fast to the belief that hope and love endure even when everything feels oversaturated and hard to hold.

Stream / download ‘Blood Ties’ here.

Rowena Wise – ‘Blood Ties’ Tour

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