Julien Baker

Baker is a lesbian and a Christian socialist. She has been sober for approximately six years, by her own estimate (as of 2019).

In 2018, Baker, along with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, formed the supergroup boygenius. They released three songs in August 2018 and subsequently announced an EP and a tour. The EP, titled boygenius, came out on October 26, 2018. Baker and Bridgers had formerly performed onstage together at various concerts.

Baker has opened for artists including Death Cab for Cutie, Conor Oberst, The Decemberists, Belle & Sebastian, Paramore, The Front Bottoms, and Manchester Orchestra. In 2017 she was signed to Matador Records, releasing a 7-inch single of the songs "Funeral Pyre" and "Distant Solar Systems". An LP, Turn Out the Lights, recorded by engineer and producer Calvin Lauber at Tennessee's Ardent Studios - with help from Sorority Noise's Cameron Boucher, was released on October 27, 2017.

On October 28, 2017, Baker made her national-television debut on CBS This Morning and on January 3, 2018, she made her late-night debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

On March 7, 2016, Baker performed in an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert. During that set she referenced a new song, "Sad Song #11", which was later retitled "Funeral Pyre" and released as a single, with "Distant Solar Systems" as the b-side. Baker contributed the song "Decorated Lawns" to the Punk Talks winter compilation Jingle Yay, released on December 1, 2016.

In 2010 Baker co-founded The Star Killers, which renamed itself Forrister in 2015. During her first year at MTSU, she began writing songs on her own, often in the university practice rooms late at night. With her friend Michael Hegner, she recorded an EP at Spacebomb Studios, which she self-released in the winter of 2014 on Bandcamp. The EP became the studio album Sprained Ankle in October 2015. Sprained Ankle topped many 2015 year-end lists and its success led to features in The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Julien Rose Baker (born September 29, 1995) is an American singer and guitarist from Bartlett, Tennessee. She is a member of the alternative rock band Forrister, formerly known as The Star Killers. She released her first solo studio album, Sprained Ankle, on 6131 Records, in 2015, and her second solo album, Turn Out the Lights, on Matador Records, in 2017. In 2018 she co-founded the supergroup boygenius with Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers.

Born on September 29, 1995, Baker was born in Germantown, but grew up in Bartlett, Tennessee. She learned to play on her father's guitar, and attended Middle Tennessee State University, where she studied audio engineering and later majored in literature with a double minor in Spanish and secondary education before leaving school to tour full-time.