Julia Pratt

Julia Pratt, an alumna of the acclaimed Berklee College of Music, weaves together sounds absorbed both inside and outside formal training—acoustic jazz, downtempo electro-pop, and minimal folk—through an emotive delivery frequently built from stacked vocal layers, as demonstrated on the 2023 breakthrough track “A Little Love” recorded with Mt. Joy.

Philadelphia-born, she absorbed music from an early age by exploring her parents’ record shelves and taking up instruments that ranged from saxophone to cello. Before long her attention narrowed to vocals, which she supported on keyboard or guitar. While still in high school she issued her debut single independently, the 2018 release “All the Girls Are Crazy.” Three years later, shortly before enrolling at Berklee, she put out the self-released EP Fallout on her own. The five-song set, limited to piano, acoustic bass, and drums, showed clear kinship with Norah Jones and Corinne Bailey Rae. Further non-album singles—“Gold,” “Tried and True,” and “Odyssey,” the last of which earned spins on Philadelphia’s WXPN—revealed her shifting aesthetic and growing taste for densely arranged vocal textures.

After Fallout, Pratt experienced a string of swift career leaps. In 2022 she was chosen to record “Fly Higher” for the Emmy-winning Disney+ film Sneakerella, collaborating with R&B producer Theron “Neff-U” Feemster. The following year the song “A Little Love,” cut with fellow Philadelphia act Mt. Joy and featured on her Two to Tango EP, spread rapidly online and accumulated millions of streams. Her third EP, the largely acoustic Family Feud, arrived in 2024.