Nearly twenty years into making music together, Angus & Julia Stone are still following songs wherever they lead—across continents, through memory, into stillness, and toward the strange comfort of not needing everything to make sense.
There is something quietly radical about not needing to know where you are going.
For nearly two decades, Angus & Julia Stone have built a career around emotional clarity, but clarity has never meant certainty. Their songs have often lived in the spaces between things: memory and immediacy, closeness and distance, stillness and movement, longing and acceptance.
On their forthcoming seventh studio album, Karaoke Bar, that instinct feels especially pronounced.
Written and recorded across Greece, France, and Australia, the record carries the physical residue of travel without becoming a travelogue. Places seep into the songs indirectly. Landscapes, memories, changing environments, and fragments of thought become part of a larger process in which uncertainty is not something to eliminate but something to follow.
“Places find their way into the music for sure,” the duo explains, “and also the nature of travel—environments and situations always changing around you.”
After twenty years of touring, adaptation has become almost second nature.
One city becomes another.
One stage becomes the next.
Some nights flow effortlessly.
Others fall apart.
The same unpredictability exists in songwriting.
“You can have these beautiful moments where everything flows and a song just arrives, and other times you get fragments of songs and have to build the rest of the world around those moments or ideas.”
That philosophy sits at the heart of Karaoke Bar.
The album’s third single, “Celestial Bodies,” may be the clearest example.
The song first began taking shape on the Greek island of Hydra, where Saharan dust had drifted across the Mediterranean and turned the sky red. It later passed through Miraval Studios in the south of France before eventually finding its final form at Angus’s Sugarcane Mountain Studio in New South Wales.
But the real journey was less geographical than accumulated.
The recording did not take years.
The thoughts behind it did.
Dreamlike fragments, turns of phrase, and observations gathered across Angus’s travels eventually converged around an existential question: what exactly are we doing here?
The answer, appropriately, is not really an answer.
“Celestial Bodies itself, the words—that’s what we are in essence,” Angus has said. “We’re all stardust. We’re all atoms bouncing around trying to figure who we belong with, the meaning of it all.”
The song does not solve that problem.
It stays inside it.
And perhaps after twenty years of making music, that has become part of the point.
Belonging Without Arrival
There is a particular kind of thinking that belongs to youth.
If I get there, things will make sense.
If I work hard enough, achieve enough, understand enough, eventually I will arrive at a version of life that feels complete.
Julia Stone remembers that feeling.
“When I was younger, there was much more of a sense that I was trying to get somewhere.”
Belonging felt conditional.
Something waiting further down the road.
“After this or that.”
That understanding has changed.
“I don’t really think about life that way anymore.”
Instead, Julia describes belonging as something more fluid.
Sometimes connection.
Sometimes detachment.
Not a final destination, but an ability to remain present inside whatever emotional state exists today.
“There isn’t necessarily a place or time where everything suddenly makes sense.”
That realization carries over into music.
Twenty years of making records together has given Angus and Julia history, skill, shorthand, success, disappointment, distance, reunion, and perspective.
But it has not delivered a final answer.
Nor does it seem to need to.
“We still want to keep making music,” Julia says. “That’s a kind of belonging that I treasure.”
Then comes the image that perhaps best describes their creative relationship now:
“Making songs can be a shelter from the storm. A kind of home.”
Not because the songs resolve everything.
Because they provide somewhere to exist while nothing is resolved.
Safety Makes the Mess Possible
When artists talk about vulnerability, the word can become abstract very quickly.
For Angus & Julia Stone, vulnerability seems tied to something concrete: safety.
“The very process of writing a song in its nature is vulnerable.”
Creating anything requires being willing to produce something imperfect.
To fail.
To sound strange.
To follow an idea that may lead nowhere.
“You have to be vulnerable and open to create art.”
Their long history together makes that easier.
Years inside studios have produced trust.
Not merely trust in each other’s musical ability, but trust that something can go wrong without the entire process collapsing.
“There’s such a comfort and safety in the studio after years of making music. So we can find freedom in that.”
Julia compares it to children becoming expressive when they feel secure.
“I don’t think adults are any different.”
“To be expressive we have to feel that we can make a mess of things and still be able to keep going.”
That might explain why Karaoke Bar feels less like a record made by artists trying to prove themselves and more like one made by people comfortable enough to wander.
A Song Can Begin Anywhere
Angus & Julia Stone do not seem particularly interested in romanticizing inspiration.
There is no preferred entrance.
“It can begin anywhere.”
A melody.
A lyric.
A feeling.
A memory.
The process is not about choosing the correct starting point.
It is about recognizing whether there is enough life inside the first fragment to keep following it.
“When we start writing, we don’t know where it’s going or if it’s going.”
Some songs reveal themselves quickly.
The title track “Karaoke Bar” did.
Others require patience.
“Brightest Place” began early in the album process and carried memories of living in New York. The chorus arrived, but the verse took much longer to find.
They knew they loved part of the world.
They simply had not discovered the rest of it yet.
“It was one of the last songs we finished. First and last.”
That sentence could almost function as a metaphor for the record itself.
Beginnings do not always predict endings.
Sometimes you circle something for months before understanding what it wants to become.
Twenty Years of Learning What Not to Force
Angus and Julia began making music together while learning nearly everything else at the same time.
Songwriting.
Performing.
Touring.
Business.
Identity.
Voice.
“We’ve grown up a lot.”
Time has changed the way they collaborate.
They once arrived in the studio with songs largely completed.
Now, they are more willing to show up with less certainty.
“We’ll often just show up and see what happens.”
That is a significant evolution.
Their first fully co-written song, they point out, was “Heart Beats Slow,” three albums into their career.
The collaborative instinct that now feels natural was not always the default.
It developed.
“We both have a better understanding of what our strengths are—what we’re each good at—and we’re comfortable letting the other person take an idea somewhere.”
Some of that ease comes from simply having worked together for so long.
“You develop a kind of shorthand.”
But being siblings adds another layer.
A shared childhood.
Shared musical references.
The same parents and grandparents.
The same sounds entering the house.
“The same influences.”
Those things inevitably shape taste.
Even if their sibling relationship does not entirely explain their musical chemistry, it gives that chemistry a deeper reservoir of shared memory.
You Know What You Know When You Know It
There is another kind of maturity in the way the duo talks about experience.
Less certainty.
Less desire to turn lessons into universal advice.
“The 70-year-old me telling me now what they know—I just know I wouldn’t be able to fully understand or comprehend it.”
Similarly, the younger versions of themselves could not have understood what they know now.
“You know what you know when you know it.”
It is a surprisingly generous philosophy.
Some things cannot be shortcut.
No amount of advice substitutes for living long enough to understand the advice.
The same may be true of collaboration.
Or identity.
Or belonging.
Or songs.
Some of them simply need time.
Outside Voices, When They Arrive
Throughout their career, Angus & Julia Stone have worked with major collaborators, including Rick Rubin, while also maintaining the ability to work independently in their own studios.
But the decision to bring someone else into the process is rarely strategic.
“It’s not really a straight line.”
They do not finish a song and immediately diagnose whether it needs outside ears.
Instead, collaborations tend to happen through timing.
Someone appears.
There is mutual interest.
The idea feels enjoyable.
“What happens around us most of the time guides our decision-making.”
They describe themselves as “mostly reactionary artists.”
If an interesting collaborator appears, they may follow the opportunity.
If nobody does, they are perfectly happy making records at home.
“We can write and record songs every day, literally.”
For Julia, that openness extends to her solo work as well, including collaborations with Thomas Bartlett, Annie Clark, Leigh Fisher, and Ben Edgar.
“Collaborating is so good,” she says.
But ultimately, it comes back to timing.
“Who we bump into along the road.”
Once again, the language is about encounter rather than control.
The Different Kinds of Noise
Much of Angus & Julia Stone’s music has historically found power in restraint.
Quiet voices.
Space.
Repetition.
The feeling that something significant is happening without demanding that the listener notice it immediately.
Asked whether that stillness has become a form of resistance in a culture increasingly built around speed and attention, Julia hesitates at the framing.
“I’ve never really thought of it as resistance.”
She simply prefers quiet.
“Life can be so noisy.”
Touring intensifies that.
Airports.
Venues.
Traffic.
Crowds.
New environments.
Constant movement.
Nature is noisy too, she points out, but differently.
“You’ve got to be quiet to hear it.”
That distinction feels important.
Stillness is not absence.
It is attention.
“There’s so much happening in stillness.”
Maybe that is why Angus & Julia Stone’s songs have always been able to feel cinematic without becoming spectacular.
The drama is often already there.
You simply have to listen long enough to notice it.
The Songs Keep Changing After Release
One of the strangest things about releasing music is losing control of what it means.
A song begins privately.
Then somebody else hears it.
Then thousands of people do.
They attach memories.
Relationships.
Breakups.
Journeys.
Deaths.
Weddings.
Long drives.
Ordinary afternoons.
The song starts becoming something the artist never intended.
Angus & Julia Stone seem comfortable with that transformation.
“Once music is released, it becomes a different thing.”
The songs also change through performance.
Night after night.
Year after year.
“We’re at the beginning of that journey with these songs.”
That perspective is especially striking given what is coming next.
A world tour is planned for 2027.
That year also marks twenty years since A Book Like This.
“It’s wild to think that was twenty years ago.”
But rather than treating Karaoke Bar as a retrospective exercise, Angus & Julia Stone sound more interested in what the new songs are about to become.
The history matters.
It just does not have to dictate the future.
In Conversation With Angus & Julia Stone
MUNDANE: Karaoke Bar was written across Greece, France, and Australia. How did each location shape the emotional atmosphere of the record, and do you think travel changes the way you write together?
ANGUS & JULIA STONE: Places find their way into the music for sure, and also the nature of travel—environments and situations always changing around you.
After touring for twenty years, it’s made us relatively flexible people, having to adapt to a new city and a new set of circumstances each night.
Things go smoothly, things don’t, and there’s so much of that in the creative process too.
You can have these beautiful moments where everything flows and a song just arrives, and other times you get fragments of songs and have to build the rest of the world around those moments or ideas.
MUNDANE: “Celestial Bodies” took a particularly long creative journey, evolving across multiple countries before finding its final form. What was it about the song that made you keep returning to it instead of letting it go?
ANGUS & JULIA STONE: The recording of it didn’t take years—in a way, the writing didn’t either.
But in another sense, it did.
Mostly because the thoughts and lyrics were collected over years of life: little snippets of dream-like thoughts and moments that came to Angus while he was wandering the world.
He was collecting these moments, and when it came to singing the song, he brought them all together with the music.
The song itself happened relatively quickly, but it was all those turns of phrase and thoughts that took time to gather.
MUNDANE: The song explores some of life’s biggest questions while remaining intimate and deeply personal. Do you find that the more universal a theme becomes, the more vulnerable it is to write about?
ANGUS & JULIA STONE: I think the very process of writing a song in its nature is vulnerable.
You have to be vulnerable and open to create art.
That’s a big part of why we love working together.
There’s such a comfort and safety in the studio after years of making music, so we can find freedom in that.
I’ve heard people talk about how kids are so expressive and creative when they feel safe. I don’t think adults are any different.
To be expressive, we have to feel that we can make a mess of things and still be able to keep going.
MUNDANE: Angus has described “Celestial Bodies” as reflecting the idea that we’re all “stardust” trying to figure out where we belong. Has your understanding of belonging changed over the years, both personally and creatively?
JULIA STONE: When I was younger, there was much more of a sense that I was trying to get somewhere—that if I worked hard enough to figure things out, eventually everything would feel right or complete.
That belonging was something down the road, after this or that.
I don’t really think about life that way anymore.
I’ve become much more comfortable with the complexity of being a person: sometimes feeling connected, sometimes detached.
There isn’t necessarily a place or time where everything suddenly makes sense.
I think belonging is more about being comfortable with how I’m going today.
Creatively, I think there’s a similar feeling now.
Twenty years into making music, we’ve travelled a road that has given us a lot of experiences and lessons, lots of ups and downs, and we still want to keep making music.
That’s a kind of belonging that I treasure.
How making songs can be a shelter from the storm.
A kind of home.
MUNDANE: Throughout your career, your music has always felt cinematic, as if every song exists inside its own world. When you’re creating a new album, do you begin with images, emotions, places, or melodies?
ANGUS & JULIA STONE: It can begin anywhere.
There’s really no particular way in.
Sometimes it’s a melody, sometimes a lyric, sometimes a feeling or a memory.
When we start writing, we don’t know where it’s going or if it’s going.
As we follow the start of an idea, something in the idea either makes us want to keep going or not.
Then we start filling out the world around that initial idea.
Sometimes that happens really quickly, like with “Karaoke Bar.”
Other songs take longer.
“Brightest Place” was one of the earliest songs we started. It felt like memories from living in New York.
We loved the chorus but took a while to find the verse that matched that world.
It was one of the last songs we finished.
First and last.
MUNDANE: Nearly two decades after A Book Like This, your musical chemistry still feels effortless. How has your creative relationship evolved, and what have you learned about collaborating as siblings over so many years?
ANGUS & JULIA STONE: We’ve grown up a lot.
When we started, we were learning everything at once—songwriting, performing, running a business, finding our voices, I suppose.
That takes time.
In the studio now, there’s this kind of natural way of making choices that comes from all that time together, and time spent just going through stuff.
Life stuff.
And you can’t really get advice about that or give advice about that.
The 70-year-old me telling me now what they know—I just know I wouldn’t be able to fully understand or comprehend it.
The 20-year-old me would not know what I’m talking about now.
You know what you know when you know it.
We also both have a better understanding of what our strengths are, what we’re each good at, and we’re comfortable letting the other person take an idea somewhere.
We used to come into the studio with songs completely written.
Now we’ll often just show up and see what happens.
So that’s a pretty major shift, but it happened gradually over time.
The first song we fully wrote together was “Heart Beats Slow.” That was three albums in.
I don’t know how much our creative connection has to do with being siblings.
When you work with anyone for twenty years, you develop a kind of shorthand.
But I guess our childhood, shared upbringing, and memories do give us a sense of shared history.
We had the same influences, from our grandparents and parents to the music that was played in the house.
That probably has an impact on our preferences and the choices we make creatively.
MUNDANE: You’ve worked with producers like Rick Rubin while also creating music in your own studios. How do you decide when a song benefits from an outside perspective versus trusting your own instincts?
ANGUS & JULIA STONE: It’s a good question.
Over the years, we’ve worked with a lot of different people.
It’s not really a straight line.
We don’t write a song and then think, “Maybe this needs someone else’s ears on it.”
It’s more like someone comes along at a time when we want to make a record, and we like them and they like us and our music, and it feels like it could be fun to explore.
I think what happens around us most of the time guides our decision-making.
I’d say we’re mostly reactionary artists.
If no one comes along and says, “Hey, wanna make a record with me?” we’re very happy to record in our studios at home.
We can write and record songs every day, literally.
It’s the most fun and natural part of what we do.
We have the best time with this project being in the studio, but we both work on our solo projects with other people too.
I love working with Thomas Bartlett.
I loved making Sixty Summers with Annie Clark and him.
I also love working with Melbourne producers Leigh Fisher and Ben Edgar.
Collaborating is so good, but yeah, it’s kind of about timing and who we bump into along the road.
MUNDANE: Your catalogue often finds beauty in stillness rather than spectacle. In a culture that constantly demands speed and attention, do you feel your music has become a form of quiet resistance?
JULIA STONE: I’ve never really thought of it as resistance, but I do feel like I’m more drawn to stillness or quiet.
Life can be so noisy.
Particularly travelling a lot for work.
Nature is noisy too, but you’ve got to be quiet to hear it.
I think that’s why I like it when I get home.
To hear a different kind of noisy.
There’s so much happening in stillness.
MUNDANE: Looking back on everything from “Big Jet Plane” to Life Is Strange and now Karaoke Bar, what continues to inspire you to create together after all these years, and what do you hope listeners discover in this new chapter that they haven’t heard from Angus & Julia Stone before?
ANGUS & JULIA STONE: I mean, it’s so fun to make music.
I can’t imagine I’ll ever lose interest in that process.
We’re genuinely enjoying discovering what the next sound is we’re going to make.
We’re as surprised as anybody when a song is finished.
I think another key to wanting to continue working together is that we’ve never held on too tightly to the idea that this partnership in music has to continue.
We love making music with each other, but we also have periods where we’re doing other things, working with other people, or not working at all.
That freedom gives the space to want to come back to create new music together.
As for what I hope people discover, once music is released, it becomes a different thing.
It changes over the many times you play the song over the years to come.
We’re at the beginning of that journey with these songs, so we’re excited to get to know the songs and see what they become through many live shows, and hearing people’s stories about the songs in their lives.
It’s nice that songs mean something entirely different from one person to the next.
We had a lot of fun making Karaoke Bar, and I think that feeling is in the record for us.
Hopefully people can find their own experience with it.
We’re really excited to take it out into the world, especially with a world tour coming in 2027, which will also mark twenty years since A Book Like This.
It’s wild to think that was twenty years ago.
A Kind of Home
There is a temptation when artists reach the twenty-year mark to talk about certainty.
Legacy.
Mastery.
Knowing exactly what works.
But Angus & Julia Stone seem interested in almost the opposite.
Their creative relationship appears to have become freer as it has become more experienced.
They show up with fewer completed answers.
They follow fragments.
They allow geography to intervene.
They collaborate when someone interesting crosses their path and work alone when nobody does.
They leave room for songs to surprise them.
And they remain comfortable with the possibility that a song might change meaning the moment somebody else hears it.
That openness may be one reason the partnership has lasted.
They have never treated it as something that must survive.
There is space to leave.
To make solo records.
To work with somebody else.
To stop for a while.
Then, when the desire returns, to come back.
Freedom becomes part of commitment.
The same principle appears inside Karaoke Bar.
“Celestial Bodies” asks where people belong and what any of this means, but the album does not appear particularly interested in reaching a philosophical conclusion.
Belonging may not be waiting at the end of a journey.
It may be the journey.
A familiar person in the studio.
A song beginning with almost nothing.
A chorus that waits months for the right verse.
A thought Angus carried somewhere in the world finally finding music years later.
A quiet room after a noisy tour.
A piece of music that once meant one thing becoming something completely different in a stranger’s life.
Twenty years after A Book Like This, Angus & Julia Stone are still moving.
But perhaps they are no longer confusing movement with the need to arrive.
The songs themselves have become the place they return to.
A shelter from the storm.
A kind of home.
