Sound Advice: Julia Wolf and Scro

Join Julia Wolf and Scro on Sound Advice, the weekly interview series covering artists’ journeys and their creative process. In this episode, we discuss Julia Wolf’s latest album ‘PRESSURE,’ collaborating with Scro, her track “In My Room” breaking through on SoundCloud and more.

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Welcome to Sound Advice, the series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers and creatives are leaning into everything SoundCloud offers to elevate their sound, get heard and catapult their careers. Sound Advice is now available in audio format on the SoundCloud Stories profile.

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On this week’s episode of Sound Advice, we’re talking to Julia Wolf and her producer Scro. Most recently, the two collaborated on Julia’s latest album, ‘PRESSURE,’ which blends hyperpop, metal, indie, trap and Y2K nostalgia together with Julia’s riveting goth-pop vocals.

In this revealing conversation, we find out about how Julia and Scro met each other and started working together, as well as the process of making ‘PRESSURE,’ and allowing each other to become more open, authentic and wild; both lyrically, and production-wise. Julia delves into her arc from pop to something darker, and talks about the success of her single “In My Room,” as well as explains how she’s curated her social media to build a world around her music with each release.

We also find out more about Scro’s musical background, and some of the production techniques that make the new album pop. Both Julia and Scro let us in on how they use SoundCloud to find new sounds and remixers, connect with fans and get their music heard.

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LISTEN TO THE AUDIO EPISODE OF SOUND ADVICE FEATURING JULIA WOLF AND SCRO

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LISTEN TO EXCLUSIVE VOICE NOTES FROM JULIA WOLF

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LISTEN TO ‘PRESSURE’ BY JULIA WOLF ON SOUNDCLOUD

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Things We Talked About In This Episode of Sound Advice

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The Journey of Self Discovery That Led to Julia Wolf And Scro’s Connection 

• We begin the conversation with the story of how Julia Wolf and Scro first met. During a period of creative uncertainty, Julia was “at her wits end;” not able to resonate with her own lyrics, and craving something more authentic. After being recommended a list of producers to potentially work with, she checked out Scro’s music and immediately felt a connection to his sound: a head blend of metal, trap and underground electronic music. 
• At the time, as Julia was living in New York City and Scro was living in Los Angeles, she slid into his DMs to see if he’d be willing to connect with her. From there, they started experimenting with collaborative songwriting online, before transitioning to working in the studio together when Julia moved to LA.
• As Julia recalls, when she first reached out to Scro, the element of her music that she struggled with the most was her lyricism. Before they began working together, Julia confessed that her writing had reached a “breaking point;” that she felt that she couldn’t be honest about her own struggles and self-doubt because she couldn’t find a sound that reflected what was happening internally. 
• When Scro and Julia linked up, they realized that they shared a lot of experiences and personality traits — most notably, that they grew up as shy, quiet kids who felt that they had a lot to express, but struggled to frame that expression to the outside world. Because they clicked so well as people, they felt confident that they could work together as musical collaborators.

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Breaking Through With Collaborative Tracks “Wishbone” and “Kill You Off”

• Some of the reference points that brought them closer together, and formed the basis of ‘PRESSURE,’ can be heard on Julia’s 2023 track “Wishbone.” As Scro tells it, he likes to follow his gut in a collaborative session — and while he hadn’t tested the water yet with Julia’s potential taste in heavy rock music, he felt that a metal guitar riff could work well with Julia’s pop-trap sound. 
• After giving Julia some rock references, and realizing that she vibed with them, he ran with that chuggy, woozy metal sound on “Wishbone,” which clicked with Julia’s vocals. 
• Together, they’ve come to share a lot of musician inspirations, such as Quannnic and Jane Remover; a blend of very online hyperpop, grunge, shoegaze and trap. One song of Julia’s that captures this energy is “Kill You Off,” and here, the duo discuss the making of the track, the nakedly dark lyrics that brought Julia out of her shell as a songwriter, and why it was important enough to be the opening track of ‘PRESSURE.’ As they describe it, it’s a musical and emotional rollercoaster that sets the tone for the album. 

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Behind Julia Wolf and Scro’s Creative Process, From Lyric Writing to Digital Production Techniques

• Now that Julia and Scro have been working together for some time, they have a collaborative flow that’s been working well for them. Here, Scro talks about his production set-up and process with Julia, including how they like to start a track off, the blending of lyrics and instrumentation, and where he gets his production ideas from.
• He also talks about Reaper, the digital production software that he used to make ‘PRESSURE’ with Julia, and why Reaper has proved to be such a fruitful application for their style of chopping and re-sampling samples when compared to other DAWs. 
• Scro also goes into more details about specific bass sounds, amplifiers and how he pulls together the heavy shoegaze and metallic rock sounds into their palette of trap- and hyperpop-referencing electronic beats.
• In terms of process, Julia reflects on how she has gone through a time of real growth and self awareness. After hitting a self-professed “breaking point” on a tour, playing songs that no longer resonated with where she wanted to be creatively, she says she knew that she needed to make a change. 
• After forcing herself to write lyrics about how she was truly feeling, and dropping those tracks online, she saw that her growing fanbase was massively connecting to the new material. This culminated in the response to “In My Room,” her 2023 track that, a year after being uploaded to SoundCloud, blew up on the platform, bringing her career to new heights. 

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The Making of Breakthrough Track “In My Room” And How SoundCloud Shaped It

• For Julia, while the experience of writing “In My Room” was nervewracking — since it contains lyrics about self-harm and suicidal ideation, among other difficult subjects — she felt encouraged to be as real as possible by her peers, fans and collaborators. By leaning into her authenticity, her music improved and travelled widely. 
• Reflecting on how “In My Room” took off on SoundCloud, Julia learned an important lesson: Great songs don’t have a shelf life, and that artists sometimes have to be patient and trust that their music finds its audience when the time is right. 
• After seeing the response to “In My Room,” Julia decided that she wanted to tap into the creative energy of her fanbase, and uploaded the track’s stems to SoundCloud so that other producers could remix it. The response to this in turn delighted and surprised her and Scro; going through the Julia Wolf hashtag on platform to find these remixes, she came across one by Badger, which chimed with her so much that she released it as an official remix. 
• Through hearing these remixes, and reading the comments posted on the tracks, Julia came to appreciate her own song and her fanbase even more; touched and affirmed by the effort other artists have made to reinterpret her music. The process went so well that she’s thinking about releasing a deluxe version of ‘PRESSURE’ that’ll feature more remixes of her songs, all through SoundCloud. 

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Using SoundCloud and Social Media For Aesthetic Worldbuilding, Music Discovery and Fanbase Connections

• Julia Wolf and Scro have both long used SoundCloud for music discovery and building their fanbase. For Scro, who started off in metal bands and producing beats for rappers, he shares that he mostly uses SoundCloud for music discovery and as an organizing tool for his demos and collaborations. Here, he explains how he likes to get inspired by going through the likes on his favorite artists’ profiles. Through this approach, he gets recommendations for obscure music that he might otherwise not find, which makes the process all the more worthwhile. 
• As a girl that grew up on the internet, Julia has an innate understanding of how to utilize social media, internet vernacular and zeitgeist aesthetics to capture attention. Here, she breaks down how she balances the need to present herself online in order to promote herself as an artist, while also not oversharing her likeness in ways that sit uncomfortably with her. 
• Here, Julia goes into detail explaining one way that she’s done this, giving the example of how she gradually pushed “In My Room” on social media by creating themed “photo dumps” of the “Twilight” movies, which she tagged with her track. In doing this, she created a visual story that her track could be linked to, something that tapped into her fanbase’s existing cultural favorites, all with a Julia Wolf twist. 
• When it comes to giving advice on how other artists can do this kind of aesthetic worldbuilding around their music, and not have to saturate timelines with their own likeness in order to grow, Julia admits that it can feel “cringe” at first — but you’ve got to push through that and keep posting. As she says, “You find your people that way, and exposure comes next.”

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Advice on Trust, Connection and Constructive Feedback in a Musical Collaboration

• After making ‘PRESSURE’ together, Julia Wolf and Scro have become close collaborators. Here, they give sage advice to fellow artists on how to cultivate a fruitful musical collaboration. For Julia, it’s all about not being afraid to take that first step — “send the DM!,” she says — and be aware that there will be a learning period between you two, even before you make music together. 
• Making music with someone else isn’t an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of faith, trust and attention to get it right, and those all come from spending time with the other person. This can be done remotely, too. In the early days, Julia explains how she would send Scro voice notes of her lyrics, ideas and singing, and Scro would use those voice notes to build musical ideas. Going back and forth like this over time allowed them to develop their own collaborative language. 
• For Scro, it’s all about that trust. As a producer, he sees his role to be as much about how to read a room and develop soft skills, like framing feedback in ways to make sure feelings don’t get hurt. To get to that stage, you have to develop a personal rapport with a person and be on their aesthetic wavelength. Once that’s established, he explains, feedback is more genuine and the other person is trusting enough to accept it. Through this process, the ideal is that ideas don’t get watered down to the point of becoming something no one loves. 

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The Musicianship of ‘PRESSURE,’ Live Performance and Advice For Young Artists Today

• When she moved from New York to LA, Julia remembers being “thrown into a ton of different sessions” that proved unfruitful and tiring. While some around her insisted that she continue for the sake of networking in a new city, Julia knew deep down that her strongest collaborative connection was with Scro, and a big part of that was his musical skills. Scro goes into more detail about the instruments that he plays, the style of ensembles that he’s played in over the years, his electronic production style and how it all comes together to inform the sound of ‘PRESSURE.’ 
• That musicality not only makes ‘PRESSURE’ sound cohesive, but has allowed Julia and Scro to work on a live performance that does the sonics justice. Here, they talk more about how they decide which elements of a track should be brought to the forefront in their live show and which songs from the album they’re most excited to play live. 
• Looking back on their work together so far, what advice would they each give themselves if they were just starting out now? For Scro, it’s all about doing what makes you happy. He’s most proud of the work that’s spoken directly to him, whether it was commercially successful or not. 
• For Julia, she would tell her younger self to speak up more, in life and in music. Looking back to those early LA sessions, she reflects on how she would mentally check out of a situation rather than advocate for herself and her ideas in real-time. Now, she knows that time and creativity are precious, and shouldn’t be squandered just to people please. At the end of the day, it’s your art — so make what you want to make and run with it. 

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Links and Extras 

Follow Julia Wolf’s journey on SoundCloud.
Press play on Julia Wolf’s 2025 album, ‘PRESSURE.’
Follow Scro, who produced ‘PRESSURE’ with Julia Wolf.
Listen to exclusive Voice Notes from Julia Wolf.
Hit play on Julia Wolf’s breakthrough 2023 track, titled “In My Room.” 
Go back to where it all began with Julia Wolf’s first-ever track, “In My Way.”
Check out Badger’s version of Julia Wolf’s “In My Room,” which Julia found on SoundCloud after she uploaded the track stems for remixing.
Listen to one of Julia’s early collaborations, with blackbear, titled “Gothic Babe Tendencies.”
Explore some of Julia Wolf’s wide-ranging influences, including Evanescence, Playboi Carti, Deftones, Lana Del Rey, Baby Keem and Frank Ocean, to name a few. 
Listen to the Shoegaze playlist on SoundCloud.
Never miss an episode and follow the official Sound Advice playlist on SoundCloud.

Getting The Most Out of SoundCloud

Learn more about using DMs to connect with fellow artists and potential collaborators.
Learn more about how to make a custom playlist on SoundCloud.
Learn more about unlimited uploads, available with an Artist Pro subscription.
Learn more unlocking access to unlimited distribution, available with Artist Pro.
Learn more about getting heard with SoundCloud’s updated algorithm, available to Artist and Artist Pro subscribers.

To discover additional features a SoundCloud Artist or Artist Pro subscription offers, visit here. To catch up on past installments of Sound Advice and make sure you don’t miss out on future episodes, visit here.

_{CREDITS Host: Vivian Host, Executive Producer: Mike Spinella, Producer: KC Orcutt, Audio Engineer: David “DibS” Shackney, Coordinator: Trevor McGee, Editorial Associate: Lauren Martin}

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