Nat and Alex Wolff Turn Inward on New Self-Titled Album: 'Very Indicative of Who We Are at This Particular Moment' (Exclusive)

Nat and Alex Wolff have grown up in the spotlight, and their new self-titled album is a reflection of that journey.

It’s been nearly two decades since the New York-raised brothers thrust themselves into the public eye as child stars, beginning their music careers on-screen as the Naked Brothers Band. Since then, they’ve pursued individual projects, broken into the film industry and spent time apart developing their own creative identities, all while continuing to share their music with each other.

After the release of their 2023 album Table for Two, the alternative pop-rock duo recognized that there were a lot of things left unsaid. Those realizations — shaped by years of touring, lessons from their personal and professional lives and the sheer weight of growing up — ultimately led the musicians to what would become Nat & Alex Wolff.

“We are adults now, and we’ve come to a point where we’re able to look back at our childhood and our teenagehood and look back at all the lucky beautiful moments, and all the pain and the trauma and the strangeness of what our childhood was,” Nat tells PEOPLE.

The 31-year-old singer knows he had an “incredibly lucky entry into the world,” but being a child star also came with its challenges. He recalls facing middle school bullies and crawling in his own discomfort at the slew of fans that would wait outside his school, and feeling “uncomfortable” to be in the public eye before he really knew who he was himself.

Those experiences informed much of the writing on the album, which is produced by Tone Def with additional production from Sachi DiSerafino, Dirty Dave and Danes Blood. The brothers revisited what they describe as the most “raw parts” of their history — grappling with the long-term effects of childhood stardom, the fallout of breakups and difficult events they hadn’t previously shared. Songs were written over several years and revisited after months spent touring, including opening for friend Billie Eilish on the North American leg of her Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour. When they regrouped, they restructured the track list and recorded new material until the 13-song collection felt representative of where they are now.

“It’s the kind of music that we’ve always wanted to make,” Nat says. “It’s like we’re finally getting closer to what we hear in our heads.”

For Alex, 28, being more honest in his songwriting while revisiting their past wasn’t necessarily easier with time — but it felt necessary.

“I feel like when you’re drilling down to write a song as in what’s really going on, you kind of got to push past a lot of what comes very naturally, what makes an easy song,” he says. "When you start to get into the discomfort of what it is to be this age and related to being a kid and what's the most raw part of your history or whatever — and then you start writing about that — I think that it just yields a more authentic response.”

Nat agrees: “You can’t go into a song and control what the outcome is going to be,” he says.

While some tracks like “Midnight Song” just “magically came together” in one take, as Alex says, there were others that took a lot of trial and error.

“I still have nightmares that Alex is still asking for new mixes of ‘Jack,’ ” Nat jokes. “We got to a point where when I’d see a new ‘Jack’ mix come into my email, I’d get a pit in my stomach.”

Alex adds that the process of creating “Jack” — which the brothers released as a single in September 2025 — felt “impossible” at times, but the final version ended up just as he envisioned.

Though the brothers’ voices and perspectives have matured since their early Nickelodeon days, there are still elements of their younger selves that remain intact. Nat says that he tried to write as he did as a kid, when he had “no knowledge of music theory” and crafted based on the positioning of his hands for a few songs on the album.

“It led me to a lot of weird, interesting places that I wouldn’t have gotten to if I was like, ‘Now I’m going to go to the two minor,” he says. “It was more like, ‘What if my hand was in this position? What if I close my eyes and just feel the piano and let it tell me what the song should be?’ ”

That vulnerability carries through on several tracks. Nat wrote “I Can’t Hurt You Anymore” following a breakup and says that it was “such a painful song to write” that he didn’t revisit it until it was time to record. On “Horse,” he explores a dark experience from his childhood and how its impact has seeped into his adulthood — a process he describes as “healing.”

“I had written it for myself just almost as therapy,” he says, recalling that his hands were shaking as he played it for Alex. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is almost even too vulnerable to share to my brother.’ ”

After Alex heard Nat’s song — which hears his older brother repeatedly taking the blame for a traumatic event that happened to him as a kid — he immediately recognized it was “special” and convinced him to record it the next day. 

The brothers also draw from a wide range of musical influences, particularly folk artists from the ‘60s and ‘70s, including Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen — whom Alex portrays in the 2024 miniseries, So Long, Marianne. On “Tough,” Alex set out to write a chorus like Cher’s “Believe,” using the same chord progression. Other tracks emerged through a mix of spontaneity and what the brothers describe as chaotic creativity.

That approach extended to “Soft Kissing Hour,” which came together during an impromptu home recording session with Eilish, who both sings on and produced the track. The three of them worked with a single mic and a guitar through the middle of the night to produce the quiet ache of the song, which they released as a single in October 2024.

With Alex on one side of the room playing piano and a plugged-in mic stretching from the opposite end, the recording retained natural background sounds — including Eilish’s dog, Shark, breathing — contributing to its lo-fi feel. Nat says “something magical” often happens with those kinds of limitations.

“All those things came together as an accident,” Nat says. “A happy accident that ends up giving it the intimacy where you feel like you’re just kind of singing the song to the listener right there. There’s no distance between the recording.”

Also adding to the sense of closeness on the album is Alex’s girlfriend of several years, fellow singer-songwriter Rozzi Crane, whose voice comes through on “If You Never Left Me.” But mixing personal relationships with business is nothing new for the Wolff brothers, who note that they've learned the golden rule about working together as siblings.

“Neither of us is allowed to use the talk back button, because we can give each other notes, but getting notes from your brother in your headphones when they're in the other room is really demoralizing,” Nat says, revealing that it led to their biggest fight of the whole album.

Despite occasional brotherly arguments, the brothers operate under what Nat calls a “real no bulls--- policy.”

“Even if we are risking hurting each other’s feelings, which we do all the time, we have to have freedom to say, ‘I don’t like that lyric or I don’t like this,’ ” Nat says. “That actually is a hard thing, and it’s only something that I’ve ever really been able to creatively get to with myself or with my brother.”

That openness has strengthened their partnership over the years. “We realized on this album that honestly our songwriting is the best on this album when we really bond and let each other rock and we meld the songs together,” Nat says, explaining that each track is a deep and true collaboration.

“There’s not like, ‘This is a Nat song and this is an Alex song.’ Table for Two is a little bit more divided in that way, but on this one, we wrote everything together and I think it made each song stronger,” he adds.

As they continue to evolve and balance careers in both Hollywood and the music industry, Nat & Alex Wolff will always represent what Nat calls “a big transition” for them as artists and humans.

“I think this is the first time when we've made music and we've really reflected on our youth and in a way that I think has been really healing and exciting,” he says. “These songs are very indicative of who we are at this particular moment.”

Nat & Alex Wolff is out Friday, Jan. 16.