The Law of The Land
Indie rock’s Sarah Katherine teases second record
“Whenever I’m not doing something I feel like I have to” – Indie rock artist, Sarah Katherine Lawless dishes on her time at the Boston Conservatory and contemplates what it means to be a multi-faceted artist.
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Shuffling through Chinatown towards the Buddha Bodai Kosher restaurant on Mott St., fresh faced Sarah Katherine Lawless was spotted slipping into the cozy eatery during lunch hour. Perched at a tiny table in the middle of the bustling dining floor, she sipped her green tea pensively while recalling her journey through the arts before touring and recording her second EP (dropping in 2026) in Nashville.
Long before the start of her metropolitan existence in Ridgewood, Queens, and the release of her debut EP “Look What I’m Learning!” (March 2024), Lawless was just like any other aspiring musician from Northern Virginia looking to hit it off in the big city.
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As a child listening to the likes of Chicago, John Mayer and Vanessa Carlton in the passenger seat of her dad’s car, she knew she wanted to be a performer.
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“I always have these memories of us sitting in the car trying to figure out lyrics to a song” she told Through the Monitor. “It changed the way I wrote music.”
Lawless's sound can be described as moody and ethereal. Her prickly vocals and dreamy keys evoke a sense of nostalgia and melancholy. “Look What I’m Learning” is an ode to the growing pains of adulthood.
“These songs capture a lot of the struggle of figuring out who I am and learning to become an adult, learning to become a good version of myself — the best friend and partner I can be,” Lawless said.
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While “Look What I’m Learning” prefaces her journey through her hardships, her upcoming second EP resonates more with Lawless. It peels away her polished veneer and explores the knitty-gritty truth of who she is deep down — even her worst moments and doubtful thoughts she might experience on the daily.
“The whole EP is the desperation of being an artist and thinking nothing is going to come from it and the fear that it will be for nothing,” she said.
Despite its current lack of title, Lawless is proud to share the name of one particular song on the record – “Look Alive,” crediting her work on the piece as her starting point for the project’s conception.
Since Lawless could speak, she was enrolled in vocal-lessons. Getting her start in a battle of the bands at her local high school, she landed a gig in Northern Virginia where she performed a piano solo.
Imagine a teenage Lawless on a dimly lit stage belting an Adele ballad on some “sad girl shit” as she would say.
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As her high school days faded away, Lawless shifted her gaze onto The Boston Conservatory, her golden ticket out of the Mid-Atlantic and onto her path of music.
Lawless tirelessly trained for her acceptance into the Boston Conservatory. Yearning to escape the constraints of her small town of Vineyard Vine clad peers, she found herself yanked from audition to audition until she finally broke into the program for musical theatre.
Lawless was a stranger in the Puritan City — unaware of the great things that were yet to come.
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Loosely wrapped in a navy-pink monogram Coach scarf, Lawless’s shiny brown hair poked from underneath her matching beanie, framing her dewy face. She sat against the busy restaurant atmosphere in the warm light, shedding her sturdy puffer to reveal a white baby tee.
Lawless observed the room as a tableau of bedraggled, dimesquare suits unfolded before her, sitting with an unrivaled zen as the background holler of the restaurant roared on.
Studying musical theatre at Berklee, Lawless felt disconnected from her dreams of becoming a musician. In the beginning, the singer feared that her aspirations were out of grasp. So she joined Kevin Sygfried’s songwriting program in hopes of rekindling her passion.
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At the same time, she began exploring the indie-rock scene in Boston with her partner and fellow musician Alexander Walk, frequenting venues like Breaking Sound and The Bee-Bop. She played her first New England show at Game On! in Boston’s iconic Fenway Park.
Lawless found that Boston’s local music scene was much smaller and more intimate than New York City’s. Centered around familiar faces and a consistent group of musicians, Lawless enjoyed her come-up there but craved a more music genre-diversified community. This drew the virtuoso to the Big Apple.
“In New York it’s just so different. You’re seeing a ton of different genres, and a bunch of people at different ages,” she said. “You’re not seeing the same tight kit communities.”
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Tied together by the mutual struggle to survive in the concrete jungle, Lawless admires the burden that many artists face to hustle in the city among other responsibilities like working a full-time job or going to university.
Alongside her excursions in the vibrant college scene, Lawless discovered the digital camera before its resurgence through TikTok and social media trends in the mid 2020s — snapping flicks and curating photoshoots of everyone and everything she could — just for the fun of it.
“I was just doing it with friends and then I started making a lot of money,” she said. “I was doing shows but I thought maybe I’d be a photographer instead.”
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For many alike, college is an exploratory phase – the bridge between adolescence and early adulthood where experimentation runs rampant.
In this case, Lawless was one of many lost 20-somethings hoping to fulfill her creative needs.
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Juggling course work and freelance photography while simultaneously pursuing gigs proved overwhelming for Lawless. However, out of all the interests she chased, Lawless couldn’t shake her undeniable love for songwriting.
“There was a lot of questioning on what direction I would go but then I realized that songwriting was always there the whole time,” Lawless said.
With many questions still swirling around in regards to what’s next, Lawless has only two words to share: Stay tuned.