Artist Spotlight: Snakeskin
Julia Sabra reflects on Snakeskin as an experimental space for her and Fadi Tabbal to process the emotional realities of their surroundings in Lebanon.
Lebanon’s independent music scene is brimming with forward-thinking talent that often flies under the radar. One standout is Snakeskin, the collaborative project of composer and Tunefork Studios founder Fadi Tabbal - one of the enduring figures keeping Lebanon’s music scene alive - and performer, vocalist, and songwriter Julia Sabra. Together, they craft a sound that can be described as crunchy dream pop, a haunting fusion of shoegaze-influenced soundscapes, industrial textures and ambient post-rock, threaded with socially-conscious lyricism that captures a sense of detached despair and defiant hope of life in Lebanon.
Their music has gained international acclaim, resonating far beyond their homeland, for how it serves as a visceral, real-time reflection and commentary on the political unrest and ongoing Israeli atrocities happening across Lebanon. At the 2025 edition of Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht, the Netherlands, we caught up with Julia Sabra backstage, where she shares the birth story of her Snakeskin project with Fadi Tabbal, reflecting on their approach to making music and how, rather than setting out to write albums about specific events, the record emerges instinctively from the emotional realities surrounding them. She also describes Snakeskin as a space of experimentation for both her and Fadi, and how, over time, their collaborative process has become entirely intuitive.
Watch the full interiew below:
