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Dec 02, 2025 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Alexa Viscius

It’s natural not to feel ready when you’re stepping into the next chapter of your life. That’s where Chicago-based indie singer/songwriter Julia Minkin was coming from when she began crafting the songs that make up her forthcoming debut album, Not Ready. Minkin first drew attention for her collaborations with French pop outfit Kid Francescoli. She contributed to the band’s 2014 album, With Julia, and their 2017 follow-up, Play Me Again, but the experience left her feeling creatively unfulfilled. “I wanted to have control and create something that was my own and that I was proud of,” she says of Not Ready. “But it took me a long time to get here.”

In the midst of the pandemic, Minkin began working on new music while holed up in Marseilles, writing and recording alongside Andrew Sudhibhasilp, her husband and guitarist. The pair relocated to Chicago in 2021, where they finished the album in their basement home studio. Minkin released “Daisy,” the first single from the record, earlier this fall, and today she’s back with another new track, “Sunburn,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Daisy” was a lithe, indie pop starburst, carried by a disco-tinged bassline and bright guitar tones. In contrast, “Sunburn” slows things down, evoking delicate folk singer/songwriters and immersing Minkin’s vocals in enveloping atmospheric production. Lilting acoustic tones guide the track as Minkin and Sudhibhasilp fill the corners of the mix with flickering guitar effects and chiming tones. The disparate, contrasting elements eventually meld together into a sweeping climactic crescendo, working in concert with Minkin’s plaintive vocal melodies.

The effect feels like waking up bathed in the warm morning glow of a new day. The lyrics occupy a similarly hopeful narrative of growth, rebirth, and newfound comfort: “I’m peelin’ back, peelin’ back layers of me / That around you I no longer find myself needin’ / It still aches to feel your gaze turn / And these raw parts, exposed, keep gettin’ sunburned / But I don’t mind the burn, as long as you’re there to notice / I find your focus relieves the sting / And I’m ready now, been workin’ so hard to be ready / I’m finally ready to let you see.”

Minkin says of the track, “‘Sunburn’ was the most recent addition to my album, and it’s a special one for me. I wrote it right around the time Andrew (my husband and producer) and I were finishing up mixing the other tracks on the album, and the lyrics are, in a way, a response to the album’s reluctant title, ‘Not Ready.’ It’s a genuine love song but also a song about growing up, facing fears, shedding old skins.

I came up with most of the lyrics and the melody while I was staying with my sister in Philadelphia, when her newborn was just a couple months old. It was this sweet, magical time — such a powerful thing to see your sister become a mother! — yet I was also dealing with some heavy personal stuff, and I think the impulse to write the song came from a need for self-comfort. I spent a lot of time wandering around my sister’s house, humming this song. My sister says that when my baby nibling first heard the masters of this record, they remembered ‘Sunburn’! I love that; I love the idea that they will grow up with this song imprinted in their earliest memories. It’s a nice message to grow up with, I hope.”

Check out the song below, out everywhere tomorrow, December 3rd. Not Ready is due out in April of 2026.