There is no shortage of bands that spend months or years finding their sound—exploring, ebbing and flowing, evolving, and often releasing their embryonic music along the way. That’s most bands, actually. And it’s a perfectly good path to take. But then there are those bands that seem to show up more or less fully formed, as though they skipped right past the awkward stages and went straight to knowing what they’re doing and how to do it well. It probably doesn’t feel that way on the inside, but it seems that way from the outside looking in. Wishy falls into the latter category.
The Indianapolis, Indiana five-piece came out of the gates strong last year with two EPs, Mana and Paradise—11 songs that clearly and confidently established their sound: A super-melodic swirl of overcast dream-pop, fuzzy shoegaze and jangling indie rock that lands somewhere between the buoyant bounce of Ducks Ltd. and the moody neo-grunge of Hotline TNT on the spectrum of Guitar-Forward 2020s Buzz Bands. The EPs aren’t flawless, but they also don’t sound like they’ll someday be viewed as Wishy’s “early stuff.” They already sound like Wishy.
Which is not to say Wishy can’t get better, and the band does exactly that on their debut LP, Triple Seven. At 10 tracks and 41 minutes long, it solidifies Wishy’s sound and proves that the band—formed in 2021 by longtime friends Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites—has the chops to sustain its standard of quality across a full-length release. This is not terribly surprising, but for rock fans burned by promising bands’ patchy releases in the past, it’s nice to hear.
On Triple Seven, Krauter and Pitchkites trade off lead vocals—the former’s come from a more nasally pinched pop-punk tradition, while the latter’s are calm and cool, often carrying melodies that float above it all. (Pitchkites sounds like she was born to sing in a dream pop band.) Throughout the album, they play off each other perfectly, whether they’re providing tonal tension (see the back-to-back zigzag of the strutting “Busted” into the luscious “Just Like Sunday”) or intertwining seamlessly, as they do on “Game,” a propulsive chunk of jangle-pop delivered at a punk pace.
Wishy have many strengths, but chief among them is their affinity for instrumental hooks that surface from the swirl and settle in your brain for the foreseeable future. They’re everywhere: A three-note idea that crests over and over again in the background of “Sick Sweet”; the skittering rhythm that underpins the title track; the arena-ready twin-guitar solo in “Persuasion”; the extra-crunchy final third of “Love on the Outside,” in which a jaunty pop tune turns into roaring riff-rock. And then there’s the nursery-rhyme cadence of the album’s caustic closer, “Spit,” in which Krauter and Pitchkites sing, na-na-boo-boo-style: “Who’s gonna break my heart? Who’s gonna wear my mind out? Wish this choice was mine.”
OK, that’s a vocal hook, but the point remains the same: Triple Seven spills over with these kinds of sounds, which also happen to be the kinds of sounds that keep people coming back again and again. Turns out Wishy have made not only one of the best debut albums of the year, but also one of the most irresistible, unshakeable albums of the year as well. It takes more than just luck to be this good.
Read our recent Best of What’s Next feature on Wishy here.
Ben Salmon is a committed night owl with an undying devotion to discovering new music. He lives in the great state of Oregon, where he hosts a killer radio show and obsesses about Kentucky basketball from afar. Ben has been writing about music for more than two decades, sometimes for websites you’ve heard of but more often for alt-weekly papers in cities across the country. Follow him on Twitter at @bcsalmon.
