Vera Sacra: Neo-medieval, Introspective, and Unapologetic
In 2024 and 2025, VERA SACRA played multiple concerts in somewhat unconventional spaces like churches and warehouse-like locations. The young electronic music artist claims that, in these types of venues, people tend to be very quiet and attentive, which is appropriate given the intimate quality of her compositions. When she starts performing, her vocals are accompanied by multiple layers of instrumentation that create an immersive, almost cinematic atmosphere. But what stands out the most during her concerts is probably the cello, which she uses to create beautiful yet haunting loops. Coupled with introspective lyrics and gentle vocals, the result is a distinctive and mesmerizing ambience. In spacious, silent spaces like churches, the effect is only amplified.
Born in Sheffield and coming from a classical background, Emily Marks has been releasing music online since she was around fourteen years old. Seeking to create a more coherent identity for her sound after years of producing what she describes as “more random things”, she decided to come up with a pseudonym to represent her music. VERA SACRA comes from ver sacrum, a religious ritual practiced in the ancient Italian peninsula. She partly chose it because of its relationship to the occult and the divine. “I’m really interested in spirituality, particularly in the modern age, and the way people cling on to these ancient ideas in their everyday lives”, she says. It was also a matter of exploring a new persona. “I just really liked the idea of having a separate person and aesthetic, which I think allows you to step away from what you think of your own self”. While laughing, she immediately adds, “not that I’m bland and boring when I’m not VERA SACRA”.
As a project, VERA SACRA pairs up elements of electronica with conventional instruments to create dreamy pop music with an esoteric theme. The imagery accompanying the songs is often inspired by large natural spaces, empty metropolitan areas, and old European iconography. After releasing two singles with an upbeat style, she drifted towards more patient, expansive sounds. It all comes together in her first EP, sacred spring, which came out on August 9th. The songs in it explore the beauty of nature and concepts of death and re-birth, but also touch on deeply personal themes. Many of them reflect a young artist feeling lost while navigating confusing and uncertain times.
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The sacred spring EP has seven songs in it. Some of them feature electronic beats, but many don’t. What’s present throughout is a calm, contemplative atmosphere created by whispery vocals and an intricate instrumentation, a suitable complement for the evocative lyrics. “Even as it stands, I’ll always have you to visit in my mind”, she sings in “when the world’s unkind”.
But while the EP probably comes off as a very cohesive and intentional work, Emily Marks claims that many of the record’s themes and even some of their more notable elements came about in accidental or unexpected ways. The quiet singing, for example, was a result of Marks recording her vocals during the night while making an effort to not wake up her housemates in her London flat. “You can’t really whip the cello out or sing at full volume [at those times], so I recorded a lot of demos with really whispery vocals and that kind of stuck”, she recounts.
The recording process, which ended in January of 2025, took place during a notably tumultuous time in Mark’s life. After moving to London for uni and becoming interested in electronic dance music, her life was continuously affected by outside factors like the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was weird. I actually got into dance music at around the same time the pandemic started, which kind of meant you couldn’t go to any clubs”. Now she wonders how the experience affected her songwriting. “My music is not really dance music at all, it’s more electronica, but it sort of incorporates elements from dance music. I don’t know if that’s because I got into the genre whilst I couldn’t really dance to it”. Since she studied both sociology and the Russian language, she was expected to travel to Russia for her mandatory time abroad, which became impossible when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in 2022. Instead, she lived in Latvia and Estonia for brief periods of time. “I was always in this strange moment of knowing that I would have to leave London for my year abroad. I didn’t really have any permanence in any of my friends or relationships. And, then, whilst I was abroad, I had the same thing for a year knowing that I was moving back to the UK”. The feelings of displacement also coincided with experiences of seasonal depression and long winters in the Baltics. While all of it was happening, Marks kept recording music for VERA SACRA. The number of rough demos she made during those years is close to sixty, she claims. A large portion of the sacred spring EP consists of the finished versions.
In “if you’ve got her too”, one of the promotional singles released in the lead-up sacred spring, Marks gets into what it feels like to yearn for the arrival of spring in the middle of a long winter. The captivating melody of the chorus is accompanied by an equally catchy instrumental motif. The careful production and the cello are perhaps the more immediately noticeable aspects of the EP, but the most memorable parts are all connected to the strong, heartfelt emotions it explores. During the process of putting the songs together, Marks remembers often favouring the very first vocal takes she recorded because they sounded the most natural. “When you record a vocal, the first one is often the best even though it could technically be better, either in the way that you’re singing it or in the way that you’ve recorded it”, she says. “For some reason, the first one is often the one that is the most raw because you didn’t really think about it that much”.
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“Did anyone order neo medieval angry feminist electronica from Yorkshire?” That’s the main text in one of VERA SACRA’s many Tik Tok videos, which she uses to promote her music online. The captions, which describe her sound in playful and inventive ways, are usually paired up with snippets of her songs and pictures of herself or various forms of visual art. While her official Instagram is somewhat limited to official announcements and candid messages for listeners, her Tik Tok is more a showcase of her preferred aesthetics and her sense of humor.
But while Marks claims to have found some listeners thanks to the Tik Tok algorithm, she doesn’t have very positive feelings for the platform. When talking about coming to terms with how important social media is for modern artists trying to promote their music, she describes it as “a very depressing realization”. “I’ve been awkward my entire life”, she says. “I kind of hate that now you need to be someone well-suited to videos and promoting yourself if you want to be a musician. I think so many musicians are weird and awkward. That’s why they make music”. Ironically, this rebellious attitude towards social media has made its way to some of her promotional content. In one of her more recent Tik Tok videos, Emily Marks/VERA SACRA spins in a chair alongside the caption “this song came out 2 days ago dunno how to promote it here’s me on a chair”.
Of course, the highs and lows of social media marketing are just one small part of being an independent musician in 2025. Working a part-time job to sustain herself in London while playing gigs and producing music is a difficult balancing act. Since she works remotely, she often feels isolated. “I'm on a laptop for three days a week and then I have a gig, so it's like oscillating between two very weird social situations”. Having to advertise her songs online while collaborating with visual artists in an attempt to curate an appropriate aesthetic, she feels like she’s always pressed for time. And that’s not even mentioning the challenges that come with promoting such a specific, niche project.
When thinking of the best moments of her time making music as VERA SACRA, Marks keeps going back to gigs she’s played. “I think all of my highlights have been live things”, she says. In March of 2025, she was unexpectedly asked to perform a one-song concert in a church. When she arrived, however, she was promptly informed that she was expected to play a full set. “I had to improvise throughout the entire slot, but it just ended up turning out really well and I realized I really enjoyed improvisation”. She remembers multiple people followed her on social media after the gig and getting invited back to the venue on not one but two occasions to play proper sets. “This year is the first year I’ve built a better live following and met more people, so I guess that’s in itself a highlight”.
In the lead up to sacred spring’s release, Marks claims to feel more settled, at least when compared to the time when she wrote the EP. While playing gigs and sharing her recordings, she’s also writing music and picking up new skills as a producer (she recently finished a course related to analog recording). “I’m always finding new techniques and new sounds and things”. And while she’s proud of the progress she’s made using computer software to create music, lately she’s gravitating more and more to conventional instruments and singing in a full voice. As time passes, she keeps writing and recording new music, and she intends to keep experimenting.
Written by Carlos José Jijón