Chasing Fridays: Wisp Q&A, Hotline TNT, crushed, more

It was a musical week here at Chasing Sundays HQ. Over the weekend, I saw Waxahatchee, MJ Lenderman, and Hurray for the Riff Raff perform in an Upstate, NY apple orchard with my parents. It was a lovely experience that gave me a deeper appreciation of all three of those artists, especially MJ and Waxahatchee. I had a blast rocking out to Weedeater in my friend's basement while we played pool, chucked darts, and crushed beers. And on my drives to and from Pittsburgh, I decided to get really into Warren Zevon, a new obsession of mine that I'm sure you'll read about in these pages sometime later this year.

Oh, I also interviewed rising alt-pop star Nate Sib for The FADER, and then published my long, emotional interview with Mat Cothran of Coma Cinema/Elvis Depressedly on this very site. Even if you don't give a fuck about his music, I implore you to read the Cothran interview because it's one of the deepest, most moving conversations I've ever had with a musician, and I think the story of his life and career says so much about America, about creativity, about humanity, and about motherfucking independent rock music.

With all that said, I didn't write about any of that shit in this week's Chasing Fridays. I wrote exclusively about new music that I've been partial to. And then for this week's Chasing Down Q&A series, I asked shoegaze "it girl" Wisp a bunch of questions about her taste and her forthcoming debut album, and her responses were so thoughtful and honest that I was practically moved to tears at various points. It's my favorite Chasing Down I've done thus far (other guests include DIIV, TAGABOW, Wednesday, and FearDorian) and I hope you all subscribe at the modestly priced premium tier so that you can read the full thing. It's worth it, I promise.

Hotline TNT - Raspberry Moon

I was so much cooler on Hotline TNT's 2023 album, Cartwheel, than most of my friends and colleagues. On paper, the band's sound – stacks upon stacks of bristly guitars, yawning-while-singing vocals, mid-tempo grooves that float like a Goodyear blimp hovering over an ocean horizon – is just where I want my indie-rock to sit. I just didn't think the songs were very strong. To me, Hotline TNT were a band with all the right reference points and the right look and the right friends, but not the actual writing chops to carry themselves over the finish line. With their new album Raspberry Moon, they not only get over the line – they run several laps around the entire track.

Raspberry Moon is the kind of record that makes me exclaim, "Yes! This is rock music. This is my rock music." These are how guitars should sound (scorching). This is how dudes in bands should sing (kinda poorly). This is how music should be mixed (loudly). The guitar solo in "Was I Wrong?" is so sizzling that you can practically feel the tube amp heat radiating on your shins. The main riff in "The Scene" is so heavy and bracing that it evokes images of trees snapping in forests and Nascars piling up on raceways. That's not to say Cartwheel didn't have songs that utterly crushed. I just think Raspberry Moon crushes harder when it wants to, and tip-toes more nimbly when it needs to.

The singing is more expressive (still a Mascis-y drawl, but less monotone) and the songs themselves are more dynamic. After a few tracks of ear-muffling fuzz discharges, "Break Right" pares back the distortion and lets a smokey bassline take the lead. The snappier, more vocally-centric "Candle" serves the same necessary function: pulling you out of the trance-like fuzz so that it mesmerizes even deeper when they throw you back into it. This is a record with real momentum, real earworms, and really savvy guitarwork – the playing, the writing, and the way the instrument is used as a sort of scrub-brush that soothes through abrasion. Raspberry Moon is a musical pumice stone, and all of my Hotline TNT skepticism has been scraped away.

crushed - "starburn"

I've written a good bit about the ongoing trip-hop revival. I don't know if the style will have quite the same impact that shoegaze did on the early 2020s indie zeitgeist, but we're clearly experiencing an uptick in bands giving Massive Attack and Portishead a modern varnish. crushed's 2023 EP, extra life, was the canary in the coalmine for this trend: a set of murky, breakbeat-boosted dream-pop that was texturally intricate and vocally staggering. "starburn," the lead single from their forthcoming debut no scope, is a little less overtly trip-hop, and I'm really intrigued by where it goes.

While it by no means sounds exactly like Interpol, there's a little bit of that early 2000s NYC swagger in "starburn," specifically when the bassline walks, the guitars pang like accidental camera flashes, and singer Bre Morell croons with a catwalk coolness. A lot of recent music I've heard in this style is missing the luxurious arrangements and showstopping vocal performances that elevate the form from disposable vibes fodder to genuinely enduring songwriting. crushed have the technical prowess and creative vision to truly stand out in this field, and I wouldn't be surprised if no scope resonates with people in a major way. I, for one, am already sold.

Golden Apples - "Noonday Demon"

Golden Apples' 2023 album, Bananasugarfire, is a record I don't listen to all that often, but every time I do, I think to myself, "This is one of the most underrated indie-rock albums of the 2020s." The Philly band are close enough in sound to their Lame-O Records labelmates in Dazy – fuzzy, 90s-indebted power-pop with a scholarly appreciation for both the Jesus and Mary Chain and Teenage Fanclub – except Golden Apples are more psychedelic than Dazy. Their resemblance to Apples In Stereo, both in name and sound, can't be pure coincidence, and I think their warm, quirky, classic sound would've fit snugly in the whole Elephant Six milieu.

"Noonday Demon" is the first song from Golden Apples's forthcoming record, Shooting Star. It's different than most of the songs on Bananasugarfire. A little shaggier, even more psychedelic, more vocally varied given the femme singer who harmonizes sweetly with Golden Apples main man Russell Edling. The way the tremolo riff jitters over the lackadaisical drum groove, and Edling's voice evaporates into a haze of reverb, brings to mind Yo La Tengo. It's less pucky and serrated than my favorite songs on Bananasugarfire, but it has the same stoney-eyed allure. I'm into it.

Ekolali - For Why You Happy

For Why You Happy, by EKOLALI

3 track album

EKOLALIvromr

Someone named John Peel's Ghost pre-ordered this record on Bandcamp. Not only is that a positive endorsement of this release, but a useful indication for the style of music you're in for here. For Why You Happy is a 35-minute ambient patchwork made by the Swedish musician Mattias Lagerkvist, who's been recording under Ekolali for over a decade, and also made some slightly darker drone last year under the moniker Murkla. Here, Lagerskvist uses his Yamaha PS20 keyboard to weave delicately woozy synth loops that're interlaced with fragments of arpeggiated clean guitar and gusts of white noise. The uninterrupted flow – especially the way the rhythm bobs like a rowboat on choppy waters – is both relaxing and slightly nauseating. I recommend washing this one down with a glass of ginger ale.

Jobber - "Nightmare"

Jobber's 2022 EP, Hell in a Cell, was one of my favorite release of that year. It just really scratched a perennial itch I have for the exact type of sludgy, sticky, dirt-stained-denim indie-rawk that Exploding in Sound have specialized in for years. At last, Brooklyn's Jobber – fronted by Kate Meizner of the equally great Brooklyn fuzz-rockers, The Glow (new music when?) – have returned with a new ripper called "Nightmare." If you like riffs that you can grab a fistful of and sugary hooks delivered with a scowl, then "Nightmare" will sound like a dream.

Chasing Down

NATALIE LU
of
Wisp

Chasing Down is a Q&A series with artists, friends, and others of good taste.

Everyone knows the story. Wisp's first ever song blew up on TikTok, making her a shoegazing star of the genre's ongoing renaissance and a fixture of whatever modern alt-rock is – touring with System of a Down and DJing shoegaze festivals all in the same year. But now that the novelty of her come-up has worn off, we can finally just focus on Wisp's music. And lucky for us listeners, Wisp's music just keeps getting better. I always thought "Your Face" was more interesting as a cultural landmark than a musical item, and most of the songs on Wisp's 2024 debut EP, Pandora, felt underdeveloped to me.

However, every song she's drizzled out since then has been an improvement. "Sword" features clomping drums and flecks of digi-gaze weirdness a la quannnic and Venturing. "Get back to me" has the weightless ache of Slowdive. And "Save me now," the third single from Wisp's forthcoming album, If Not Winter, is her most purely enjoyable song yet. Most of Wisp's older material was suffocated by thick plumes of reverb and sludgy riffs that made the songs move with the strained gait of Sisyphus's workout regimen. "Save me now" is the opposite: loose and light on its feet. A song for swinging sweaty curtains of hair over your eyeballs and shaking your hips without a single inhibition in your bloodstream. The type of song that'll sound great in those stadiums with System of a Down.

For this edition of Chasing Down, I asked the self-proclaimed lifelong Whirr whore about seeing the band live this past spring. Then, I made Wisp choose between Slowdive and MBV, fielded her favorite discoveries of 2025 thus far, and got a preview of the influences and personal inspirations that fed into If Not Winter. Read the full Q&A below.

You're obviously the internet's most prominent Whirr fan. What was it like to finally see them live this past spring? Also, what're your thoughts on Raw Blue?

Seeing Whirr live was honestly one of the most fulfilling and transcendent experiences of my life. I came out for a song with Nothing as well, and I got to see all the people I admire and love in one room. The impact Whirr has had on my life is something that will stick with me forever. Their music is imprinted on my heart, seriously. I was struggling (preettyyy bad) during my two years in college and it was also the first time in my life I began to argue with my parents. I can’t describe how isolating those years were without making it sound like any less of a dark and bottomless pit.

Whirr was my kiss back to Earth and connected me to a space of escape. I would walk to my classes around my rainy campus, put my earbuds on, listen to Whirr, and just start sobbing. But it was beautiful, and I don't think any other artist has blessed me with such soulful bliss before. So yeah, seeing them live was really full circle. I never thought they'd come back – let alone I would have met them already last year (and nearly froze to death), and watch them from side-stage this year. I fan-girled so hard I walked out of my dream concert with three different access passes. They did amazing, I cried, it was all I've ever dreamt of.

And it was not only the fact I saw Whirr that made that night so fulfilling. Nicky (of Nothing) is one of the kindest, most attentive, and most generous people I know. I'm so honored I was able to come out for a song with them. I go into these shoegaze festivals thinking, "Okay half of this room probably doesn't like me, but the other half might," and my so-called tarnish on the community walks with me. So many people in the green room last night (Vyva being one of them, a sweetheart), asked me if I understood my positive impact on the scene. I always awkwardly shake my head and reject the compliment. But when I walked on stage that night, and I saw the excitement on people's faces, I felt so rejoiced with the present and it reminded me that people care, people can love – and I am loved.

I feel so grateful to the Luster guys, the Nothing guys, the Whirr guys, my friend Fernie, Glixen, Vyva, Marissa, and everyone else involved. I have a home and it is here.

Raw Blue was such a refreshing project for me to listen to. Amazing songwriting aside, I really like the direction they took with the mixes and I’m happy to hear them exploring new sounds (like adding saxophone! So sick). An explosive but diverse album, I listen to it almost everyday. My favorite track would have to be "Crush Tones.” I always gravitate towards the sweet sounding tracks. They also played "Crush Tones" live at Slide Away. Imagine how I felt….