Outgrowing the bedroom and entering the big stage, LA-based artist Wisp’s debut record drifts between shoegaze haze and high fantasy lore. She meets writer Douglas Jardim to talk the price of social media stardom, and building the magical world of Wisp.
It’s Monday noon, LA Pacific Time, and Wisp – real name Natalie Lu – has awoken from her Sunday slumber, albeit late for our scheduled Zoom call (it’s after hours here in London.) “Sorry I was stuck in a really bad nightmare, and my body would not wake up,” she apologises – should I have pressed her on this? Her soft and gentle delivery, not unlike that of her DIY shoegaze oeuvre, immediately puts me to ease. It’s a personable first impression, and the tardiness is quickly forgotten
She’s just turned 21, and at the cusp of something considerable that our younger selves could only have dreamed (peacefully) of. Having set sail on a global headlining tour of her debut record, If Not Winter, the TikTok famous fantasist is ready to come out of her elusive pearly white shell, beyond the bedroom confines of social media. “Being able to just rock out and sing my heart out, it’s such an escape for me,” she says. “I’m transported into my music world. I can be vulnerable on stage and sing with emotion, and feel the energy from other people and give them back that same energy.”
The word “ethereal” gets tossed around a lot among music journalists, but it’s a fitting descriptor. Lu’s zeal for performance comes from her background as a ballet dancer growing up in Ocean Beach, California, “It’s a very important aspect of my identity,” she tells me. Old Japanese films like All About Lily Chou-Chou informed a naturecore aesthetic at the beginning stage of her career: hyper-feminine, cutesy, and coquettish in dress. Though it’s her all-time love for shoegaze legends Whirr, plus metal’s Korn and Deftones, that fundamentally gave Wisp that outré edge. “My “Whirr & Nothing” split vinyl is my most prized possession, I got it signed by all the Nothing guys and all the Whirr guys.”
Back in 2023, while studying computer science at San Francisco State University, Lu layered her pixie girl vocals on BandLab over a gloomy instrumental she found on YouTube by the producer grayskies. Thus, “Your face” was born, a moody number about the suffocating emotions of longing that took social media and streaming by storm. “During that time, especially on TikTok, the new palette was rock music. Deftones was having such a big comeback, people wanted more of that, like, crushing kind of feeling. I think that “Your face” really played into that scenic soundscape for a lot of people, and it had a sense of nostalgia for the older fan base as well.”
Lu’s first foray into music has done wonders for her blossoming career. She’s landed the likes of Coachella, Lollapalooza, and All Points East, and secured dates supporting Deftones on their stadium tour, a full circle moment. After reaching #10 on the Billboard Hot Hard Rock Songs chart, “Your face” now sits at over 150M Spotify streams. It’s her biggest hit to date, though some debt is owed to its original TikTok upload that managed to garner a million views in less than a week. On keeping a low profile as Wisp, “I was not showing my face too much and not making that personal connection with my fans yet,” Lu shares. “At my very first show, a lot of the fans were very shy and timid but super sweet as well. Nowadays, because I’m showing my face a lot, I think that we have grown to understand each other more. Hearing their stories of how my music has helped them, being able to meet them in person and listen to these stories, it means so much to me.”
Known collectively as Wispers, Lu’s devoted fans have been with her since the start, acrossInstagram, TikTok, and Reddit – sorry, X. “I just don’t know how to use that app, so I’ve never tried opening it.” In her down time, when she’s not consuming brain rot, “There are a couple content creators that I love watching. I think it would be super sick to do Quenlin Blackwell’s Feeding Starving Celebrities. Hamzah and Martin [Slushy Noobz], I think they’re the funniest people ever. I would love to just play games with them, or make a video with them.”
When Lu asked her then-modest following for stage name suggestions, they were the ones who coined the godly moniker Wisp. As a little girl she latched onto the delicate beauty and romance behind Greek mythology. “Aphrodite means a lot to me. I wish that I grew up as a princess or a mermaid, sometimes I’m still socially thinking that I really am a mermaid, which is not true, but I wish it was.” She giggles at the thought. Today her following are the first to be teased with new material, for instance her latest other-worldly gem “Yellow” – a cover of the Coldplay classic.“Being able to mature as a person but also as a creative has been a really cool journey to see myself on,” she expresses. “The way that I’m dealing with my life experiences, that also really changes the way that I write my songs.”
Making the leap to Los Angeles following the success of “Your face”, Lu got to work on April 2024’s “Pandora” EP, a coarse medley of harsh guitars and airy vocals – “Enough for you”, “See you soon” – electric reverberations of Grimes’ “Art Angels”. It was Lu’s first time working with outside producers including Elliott Kozel, and Max Epstein aka Photographic Memory, whom she reunited with for her follow-up, If Not Winter.
In motion since May of last year, Lu grew her team of core collaborators – aldn, Gabe Greenland, Stint – and went into the mindset that not a single song was going to have the intention of being part of a smaller project. Together they bring high fantasy to life, inward-looking imaginations are made a reality through grander, complex reverb-soaked compositions and a more mature approach to plaintive mythical storytelling. “I wanted to not just write about romance and relationships this time, I also wanted to write about self-doubt, my insecurities, my fears. Being able to break out of the box and write about self-love instead of my love for others.”
The title of If Not Winter that Lu gave her debut record, as well her favourite song off it, is derived from that of a poetry book by the Ancient Greek poet Sappho. It “has inspired so many of my best lyrics,” she proudly states. “Black swan”, a song about the very personal fear of being perceived in the public light, stands strongly opposite “Get back to me”, an emotional exercise on writing about the reckless experiences of others. “Most of the songs, besides “Save me now”, we all wrote from scratch. Max likes to do this thing where he’ll ask for three words. Different adjectives that help guide us towards the direction of the vibe of the song, that could be solace or melancholy, nostalgia, childhood. I still feel like that makes it broad in a sense where we can turn a bright feeling song into something sad, just purely based on lyrics or the chord progression. We just build off each other.”
Inspired by the likes of Harry Potter and World of Warcraft, Lu is the creative director of her childhood fantasies, best personified in the slo mo film visual for her crashing lead single “Sword”. Filming took place at a castle in Latvia, the setting for her relationship roleplay as a sad, frustrated princess who longs to be acknowledged by her knight in shining armour. Cloaked by fog and candlelight like a true damsel in distress, she lives and breathes the world building of Wisp. “As I was walking up to the castle, church bells started ringing and there’s waltz music playing, and for the first time in my life I was like, “Oh my god, I’m living in a dream,” it felt so surreal. Pushing that image forward to my viewers, I want to immerse them as much as I immerse myself into my world because to me, it’s real.” Conveniently, these church bells are canonised on interlude-of-sorts “Latvia” at the album’s halfway mark.
Making whatever music Lu wants and not having to label it shoegaze was a dominant strategy in the shaping of “If Not Winter”. “As much as I love the shoegaze community, a lot of the purists can be very specific about the sound that comes with the label,” she adds. “I don’t want to restrain myself to a specific term or to one specific community. Taking my inspirations from shoegaze and adding my own twist into them, I kind of just label it all as alt rock now, and I’mable to now have this weight off my chest and experiment more with pop vibes and electronic vibes.”
Since “Your face”, Wisp has welcomed plenty of plaudits. But she’s also found her fair share of haters, hidden away in Reddit’s shoegaze forums. It’s a toxic environment, one rife with plagiarism and industry plant accusations stemming from her breakout. Lu stresses her love for grayskies, “an incredible producer”, but is also quick to address the misconceptions of her alias.“I was definitely active in the forums when all of that started popping off. I think a lot of people thought that I was actively trying to profit off of the shoegaze genre, just because it was trending. That’s when I started really letting it get to my head because not only was it an attack on my artistry, it was an attack on me as a person. The roots of shoegaze, I admire all of it, and I admire the history and the culture of it. I know who I am as a person, and I will always stay true to myself. I know what my intentions are, which is the most important thing.”
Lu has left that side of the internet for good, it appears. “I have not been on Reddit ever since, which has been very healing. I think that not feeding into people’s perception of me is for the best.” Before jumping into her second album, Wisp needs time to wind down. There’s always room for more growth, and only time will tell what the next chapter holds. For now, she’s concentrating her efforts on expanding the realm of possibility. “I want to keep playing shows, to build up the show to be better, and connect with more fans. Do more interactive experiences like pop ups or meet and greets, and just be able to build this world around us. Not only am I writing music for my own mental health or for my own sake, I’m writing also for these people that find solace and a place of comfort in my music too.” Don’t forget to bookmark this page, Wispers.
Listen to the album…
Words – Douglas Jardim
