by emma schoors
photo by maria himelfarb
wilt guitarist Andrew Perrea has a thing for Tame Impala.
His room, in which newly-recruited wilt bandmates sit dutifully around him, is home to four of his perennial favorite band’s posters. Lead singer Chelsea Rifkin assures me there’s more just outside. He touts a Lonerism-inspired tattoo, six concerts attended for the band alone, and a natural inclination towards production fueled by Tame Impala mastermind Kevin Parker. Yet, in the midst of fawning over the artist that’s shaped the trajectory of his life, Perrea makes a critical distinction. “This actually is one of the few instances, in this band, where I'm not trying to reference or be inspired by them,” he says.
The Los Angeles-based group is anything but lacking in the influence department. Rifkin pays homage to Hole’s penultimate Celebrity Skin by way of the band name (“Wilted and faded / Somewhere in Hollywood”), drummer Daniel Bermudez is partial to John Brion’s solo work, and guitarist Aaron Liebman pins Alabama Shakes as a favorite. They bond over a shared admiration for Alex G and Blake Mills, but there’s something about wilt as an entity that requires an approach more stirring.
Debut single “gwen” is gritty, glittery, and unapologetically resourceful at heart. “I was trying to teach myself guitar, and the only chords I could learn were the fucking Hole songs,” Rifkin says. Grant Park served as her muse during a semester-long tenure at Columbia College in Chicago, and it’s there that the pieces magnetized. gwen’s cover shot represents the scattered ruins of Gwen’s current life: “A bottle of rosé, some scissors, some of my antidepressants,” Rifkin laughs. It’s not a scathing name-drop. If anything, Gwen’s character is a metaphor for stagnation and untapped talent. “I am Gwen. You are Gwen. Gwen is someone who has all this potential, but can't get her shit together at all.”
“You flirt with everyone / Cause you know you won’t see them again,” Rifkin lowers from a full-throttled yell to a restrained observation. As for the instrumental aim, “It’s really just servicing her vocal and her song and story,” Liebman says. “I'm always trying to entertain the ear, you know?” he explains, more generally. “That means every eight bars, bring something in, take something out, whatever. Just keep the retention up.” wilt flaunts two working producers in Liebman and Perrea, which has allowed the embryonic group to write and release “gwen” without so much as a cent of outside support.
Since its November release, “gwen” has garnered 70,000 streams, helped the band reach 50,000 followers on Instagram, and ushered in a dizzying volume of impassioned opinions. “People hate us!” Rifkin says. Liebman points to a recent viral video as having an entire comment section full of fights. Engaging with new fans has in turn become increasingly difficult, but they’ve refused a route of disenchantment. “It totally is overwhelming, but it’s also our dreams coming true,” Perrea says. Liebman adds, of the newfound demand: “There’s a lot of comments on Instagram of people being like, ‘How do you guys only have one song out?’ I'm like, ‘Dude, I don't even know how we have one song out!”
We sat down with wilt for their very first interview: an in-depth discussion on their exhilarating, ongoing rise to online cult favoritism, everything “gwen,” and what to expect from the band in the months to come.
This seems like a relatively new project. When did wilt become official?
Aaron: “We actually got together in the same room for the first time in, I wanna say July. I've been producing with Chelsea on and off for the last four years, and she was a solo artist type beat, and that was fine. She was like, ‘We could do a band!’ I'm like, ‘Do people do bands in 2022?’ I guess so. These guys are incredibly talented. Dan's a session drummer, Andrew's another professional producer and straight up, I was like, ‘They’re so busy, they're so good. We’ve got to make them come to us.’ I was afraid to ask, but they hung out for a few practices and they were like, ‘Okay, yeah, this is pretty unique and this is pretty nice.’ We all got along super well. We're all friends. Then we kind of just gunned it for a house party show. We practiced four songs, and then it was solidified.”
Have any of you been in bands before?
Aaron: “We’ve all been in bands except for Chelsea.”
Chelsea: “I'm also a couple years younger than everyone else. They're all working musicians. They've all done a lot of shows, a lot of band stuff. I did theater and acapella my whole life.”
Andrew: “I played in a bunch of bands in high school, came out for college and kind of stopped doing the band thing. Started producing, but was more just working with individual artists. This is my first band since 2017.”
Chelsea: “Dan’s in some other bands.”
Dan: “Yeah, I'm in a couple other bands. I've been in a bunch of them, just a lot of different types of stuff over the years.”
Is this the band you’re planning on going all the way with?
Aaron: “It is now!”
Do any of you come from musical families?
Chelsea: “My mom and dad, they’ve worked at record stores their entire lives. They're not musicians themselves, but they're very, very big appreciators of music. So for my entire life they ran an online record store out of my garage. They've always just been really into music. Flash forward, I think that was five years ago now. My mom works for this music magazine called Flood. They do a bunch of really cool stuff. I'm actually gonna go do a PA thing for her in February, I think. Yeah, that's the most musical I get. And my brother, actually, my little brother is 16, and he's a jazz drummer.”
At 16? Wow. So is that how you got into records, just digging through their bins and everything?
Chelsea: “Yeah, I mean I think I honestly got desensitized to the record trend that started happening when I was like 14, when they started selling records at Urban Outfitters. I was like, ‘I had like 10,000 records in my garage. This is not cool. I don't get it.’ Now of course, I'm like, ‘Damn, I was such a cool kid. That was such a cool thing.’ I was digging through a little bit, especially for Nirvana and 90’s stuff.”
Did anyone else come from a music-type family?
Andrew: “I would say I didn't, but my parents do love music a lot. My parents did make me play piano when I was a kid, which I really didn't like. I came around to guitar when I was 12 because of the Beatles Rock Band. I guess something's in the water, because my brother's also a composer. He does scores and more orchestral arrangements. My parents are just big music people. They love a lot of soul and disco. They grew in the 70’s. I did grow up with a lot of music in my house, for sure.”
You’re the makeshift bassist right now, right?
Andrew: “Since we haven't really played any live shows, we get together and jam and Aaron and I literally switch off. When we produce, it's really just whatever is needed, so Aaron may lay down a bass line, and then I'm like, ‘I have a different idea,’ and then I'll throw something and we'll kind of meet in the middle. Since we're both really into production, we just kind of fill the roles as they're needed with guitar and bass.”
Chelsea: “We’re actually meeting with some potential bass players this week.”
Andrew: “It's actually funny. I will say this: in every rock band previous, it's like, ‘Oh, you know how to play the root notes, sweet. Here’s the bassline. Oh, you played guitar a few times. Okay, sweet, you can get on bass.’ But now for the first time, we're taking it pretty seriously.”
Chelsea: “We want a badass bass player.”
Aaron: “We’re looking for a bandmate, too.”
Chelsea: “A friend, a bestie.”
Aaron: “It’s like auditioning a friend.”
Chelsea: “We see each other three times a week, and we're all super, super close. So we obviously want someone that's gonna fit into that, who’s also talented. Fingers crossed we find that.”
Since no one’s asked this yet, where did the band name come from?
Chelsea: “I love Riot Grrrl stuff. I love, maybe not Courtney Love so much, but she's so cool. Hole is so cool. In Celebrity Skin, which we actually covered for our first show, which was so, so cool because I had sung that song since I was a little girl, and I finally got to perform it in front of people and it was on my birthday, which was so sick. She has this lyric and it's like, ‘wilted and faded somewhere in Hollywood.’ When we were coming up with band names, we couldn't really find what we liked. We had settled on Chelsea and the Rips for a second, [laughs] rips because we're all kind of stonery, but it just wasn't hitting that much. And then I was like, ‘wilt.’ We saw there's a bunch of other wilts, and we were like, ‘Whatever. We’re cool, and wilt is a great name. We’re gonna use it.’ Now we're wilt and now it fits. I feel like it fits so well in my life.”
Andrew: “I knew when I heard Chelsea say wilt, I was like, ‘That’s the band name, for sure.”
Short band names are less common nowadays, aren’t they? If you’re willing to go all the way and be the most memorable wilt, it’s worth it.
Andrew: “We’re going to be the wilt. That’s it. Also, it’s really cool that there’s a wilting flower emoji.”
Aaron: “You don't think there was another band called The Killers before 2004? But there's one The Killers. We’re gonna be the one wilt, hopefully.”
Are you big Killers fans?
Aaron: “They’re drilled in my brain, basically.”
Andrew: “I don’t think we had a choice.”
Chelsea: “I didn’t grow up as much with them. My mom and dad were super into new wave. My first concert was Depeche Mode.”
How old were you when you saw them?
Chelsea: “I think I was maybe eight, and I met Dave Gahan, because my mom had artist passes for whatever reason. She’s actually crazy. They're going on another tour this year, and she's flying to London to see them, and she's seeing it here in Las Vegas. They're big Depeche Mode fans.”
Honestly, it’s worth it for Depeche Mode. I’d love to get a feel for your individual music tastes. What were each of your top artists this year?
Chelsea: “I'm gonna tell you three because I feel like they're all very polarizing and different. I listen to a lot of sleep music when I sleep, like my deep sleep playlist. That kind of fucked up my list. But my top artists were Lana Del Rey, BROCKHAMPTON, and Alex G. I would say that's a very accurate representation of where I'm at in my music taste right now. We all love Alex G. He’s, I think probably one of our favorite artists.”
Aaron: “Mine was Black Country, New Road. The album that came out earlier this year was so good.”
Andrew: “My top artist is my perennial favorite. Not so much an influence for this band, but Tame Impala.”
I was like, “There’s too many producers in this band for there not to be at least one Kevin Parker fanatic.”
Chelsea: “He’s a Tame Impala stan. Look around this room! There’s so much Tame Impala stuff.”
Andrew: “There’s three… no, four Tame Impala posters.”
Chelsea: “Just in this room. If you go outside the hallway, there’s more.”
Andrew: “Yeah, it’s kind of a bit for me. I’ve seen them six times, and I actually have a Tame Impala tattoo. This actually is one of the few instances, in this band, where I'm not trying to reference or be inspired by them. I'll say, it is epic, and him doing everything himself inspired me to be a producer, which I do take that work ethic to this band. Mine's not that embarrassing except for number five, which is fine. It's Djo, Joe Keery’s band. When that album came out I was just like, ‘Oh man, this is it.’ Tamino, which I didn't think would be up there. He’s just this Middle Eastern indie boy. Pup, Pinegrove, and then Charlie Puth, because I'm a producer. I can't help it!”
Chelsea: “Fair enough.”
He’s talented. Doesn’t he have perfect pitch?
Chelsea: “Yeah, but you’re born with that. You don’t work towards that.”
I watch this musician who taught his son to have perfect pitch. I think it’s possible if you learn when you’re young enough.
Aaron and Andrew: “Rick Beato!”
He’s so awesome. I love his “What Makes This Song Great” series, just watching him jam out.
Andrew: “Very talented guy, yeah.”
You’re in a record store surrounded by every record ever made, and you can only choose one. Every other record disappears forever. Which album are you reaching for?
Chelsea: “Oh, that makes me hurt inside. Got to think of a versatile one, man.”
Aaron: “Wait, am I doing this selfishly, or to save humanity?”
Selfishly, obviously.
Andrew: “I can just go ahead and continue my bit, and I’ll definitely say Lonerism [by Tame Impala.] It’s what my tattoo’s inspired by. It’s just my forever listenable record because it's so creative and it never really repeats itself. I feel like every song in there was so inspired, and just textural and psychedelic. I really love big soundscapes, so that's definitely my favorite record.”
Chelsea: “Oh my God, I don’t know [laughs]. I'm sorry. I'm looking through my Spotify right now. I'm freaking out.”
It’s not a fair question because you don’t always love the whole album. Sometimes there’s a few tracks you just adore, and the rest isn’t your thing.
Chelsea: “Yeah, I’m not an album person.”
Aaron: “It probably would change depending on what week you ask me. This might be showing my age, but I really like Sound and Color by Alabama Shakes. That's one of those albums that there's only one shitty song and that’s at the very end, and the rest of it is produced by this guy Blake Mills, who I idolize and really admire.”
Chelsea: “We never talked about this. That’s so cool, I love Blake Mills.”
Aaron: “I think it's so cool. I think that won a Grammy, and they were headlining festivals around that time, and every song is just so good and so vibey. I love that album.”
Dan: “My favorite record, it's kind of an obscure one from the 90’s. My favorite producer, this guy John Brion, he's a full inspiration all the way. He did the score for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Have you seen that?”
Yeah.
Dan: “It’s a classic. His one solo record that he came out with in the 90’s called Meaningless is probably my favorite album of all time. It just came out on vinyl and streaming for the first time ever.”
Andrew: “That’s a deep cut.”
Dan: “Deep cut, yeah, it's just end to end a one man band. It revolutionized music for me when I listened to it. Like, whoa, one person could do this. Record this and mix this and do it all.”
That seems like the path you’re taking, keeping it independent. Is the plan to sign to a major label, or do you want to keep things small?
Andrew: “That’s something that we're trying to figure out, because I think we all thought three weeks ago when we put the song out that we would be grinding at this and it would take a while. Just during this interview we're gonna hit 30k followers on Instagram. ‘gwen’ is just getting so much more recognition than we thought, so we're definitely reconsidering our paths and our timeline for what our career looks like. I think we definitely all wanna take this as far as we can go.”
Aaron: “I do wanna hear Chelsea’s album.”
Chelsea: “I feel like, just the one that's resonated with me throughout my life the most, probably The Bends by Radiohead.”
The old reliable. Your debut single “gwen” was produced with no outside help — where did you record?
Andrew: “At Aaron's house, at my house. Those are the places, we’re both producers.”
Aaron: “We should mention that both Andrew and I do this professionally. We're rather new at it, I suppose. We've been doing it for a while, but we both have home studios.”
Andrew: “I mean, ‘gwen’ is now the song that I've produced, co-produced… I mean Aaron did most of the production, but with the most streams.”
Chelsea, you shot the cover? Are you into photography at all?
Chelsea: “That's the thing, I'm literally not at all. I have a Canon T3i from the Tumblr era when I was like 13. I whipped it out and I was like, ‘I have this vision.’ The original vision was gonna be [my friend] Leah on the toilet with her legs bent at the knees, and she had these underwear that was gonna be embroidered with ‘gwen’ on the front, but that ended up being too much. I couldn't get it down to a square. So I did this cigarette on top of my vintage ass looking toilet. You see Girls to the Front on the cover, my favorite Riot Grrrl book of course, and a bottle of rosé, some scissors, some of my antidepressants, [laughs] everything you need.”
What was the initial spark of inspiration for ‘gwen?’
Chelsea: “‘gwen was a song I wrote when I was in college. I went to Columbia College, the University of Chicago art school for literally a semester, and it just wasn't my thing. I was going for music, but I loved Chicago. I met all my friends there. ‘gwen’ was kind of this idea of a song that, I would spend a lot of my time in Grant Park, which is this beautiful beautiful park on Lake Michigan in Chicago. I’d pretty much write all of my songs there. I just kind of had this idea when I was really just not feeling great about myself or what I was doing at the time. I had a lot of mental stuff going on, and adjusting to a new city, being an adult for the first time. Obviously there's a few lines that I could pull out that are more sentimental, that make more sense to me. But overall it's just, I am Gwen. You are Gwen. Gwen is someone who has all this potential, but can't get her shit together at all. Just can't find it. I have a line that says, ‘gwen, you can do anything.’ That's not me being like, ‘You can do anything.’ It's, ‘You can do anything.’ You can do anything you put your mind to, but you're not. Like, when will you, please? It’s me begging.”
Were there any bands or songs you looked to in terms of inspiration? Did you want it to sound a certain way?
Chelsea: “At least for the songwriting aspect, not the production aspect, because it did sound very, very different when I brought it to the guys. Definitely nowhere near as good as it is now. I was really in the deep hole of my Hole phase in Chicago feeling angsty, and I was singing Violet every single day, and Doll Parts. I never really played instruments except for a little bit of piano, and I was trying to teach myself guitar and the only chords I could learn were the fucking Hole songs. So I was like, ‘Hmm, I guess I could always write to this, then.’ When I first wrote it, I was like, ‘This is completely Hole inspired.’ But then as we brought it to life, it definitely took on a lot of different things. You guys wanna talk about the production aspect? We definitely had a lot of references.”
Andrew: “We were kind of splitting the difference between computer music and rock band, right? We wanted to have that supernatural kind of vibe. Luckily we had access to nice-ish gear through our friends and our connections. We tracked the guitars through a really nice Mesa amp, and we were listening to a lot of Pretty Sick.”
Chelsea: “We love Pretty Sick. That’s a big aspect of the song.”
Aaron: “Weezer, Queens of the Stone Age, just anything with really big guitar sounds. Chelsea, it's really just servicing her vocal and her song and story basically. We didn't do anything too crazy, and as a producer with ADHD, I'm always trying to entertain the ear, you know? That means every eight bars, bring something in, take something out, whatever. Just keep the retention up. It’s funny because Andrew and I [feel] there's no such thing as a perfect mix. I listen to ‘gwen’ and I hear things that can be improved still, and I’m going to forever. You're either listening to a song, or you're listening to a mix, and for me it's still kind of a mix. But it's so cool to see people be like, ‘I've been listening to this on repeat.’”
Chelsea: “So sick.”
Are you working on any other material?
Chelsea: “We have a lot of stuff written. I would say we have enough for an album, but we're trying to take it slower on the recording process. In our belt we have one song that will definitely be coming out near the end of January, hopefully. That’s already uploaded and everything's done. We’re working on another one for maybe the beginning of January that's really fun. It’s like 90% done. We just don't want to release it during Christmas time, which is mainly why we're waiting, also because I need to shoot a cover for it. The inspiration hasn't struck quite yet, but we have a bunch of other stuff coming. We're hoping to maybe release an EP, maybe the summer of next year or fall. That could be really cool. But right now we're definitely gonna keep it with the singles, and they’ll definitely be one after one after one coming for a while.”
Andrew: “We’re in a situation where we didn't expect ‘gwen’ to go so crazy. We were ready to just kind of do it piecemeal, and just build song to song and have a slower trajectory. But now that ‘gwen’ has already gotten a lot of attention, it's something that we're gonna sit back and try to build up more material.”
Aaron: “We got our most streams on ‘gwen’ in a single day last night, so it's still going up. We’re like, ‘Well, this can actually hold us over.’ Although there's a lot of comments on Instagram people being like, ‘How do you guys only have one song out?’ I'm like, ‘Dude, I don't even know how we have one song out!’ They want a body of work, which is really cool to see people asking for it.”
Have you played many shows yet?
Chelsea: “Just the one, it was on my golden birthday. It was a house show. It was really cool. There were a lot of other really great artists too. It wasn't anything huge, but it was definitely the best vibe for a first show. Everyone loved us, we loved everyone. It was super fun.”
Are any of you avid concert goers?
Chelsea: “I would say we all kind of are, yeah. I've personally been to five different concerts in the last two months. This is like my concert going season.”
What concerts?
Chelsea: “I did Duster at the Roxy, Alex G at The Wiltern, Lil Nas X at YouTube Theater. I'm not really super into pop music just because it's never really been my thing, but he's the one I love. He's my guilty pleasure. I think he's amazing, I really do. I think he's super talented, and that was such a cool concert. I went to the BROCKHAMPTON final show like two weeks ago. I was gonna go to Car Seat Headrest, but they canceled it. I was so upset about that, I love Car Seat Headrest. Alex G was sick though. That was probably my favorite concert I've ever been to. I'm just such a big fan of his.
LA has some seriously amazing venues — Troubadour, Roxy, Forum, the list goes on. Which ones would you like to play at in the coming years?
All: “The Roxy!”
Chelsea: “Yeah, we have to be realistic. That’s a great venue. I also love the Fonda.”
Andrew: “My dream for the band has always been for us to play this festival Desert Daze. It’s at Lake Perris, like an hour out from LA.”
Aaron: “It's gonna happen.”
Andrew: “Just playing on the beach there is all I can ever ask for.”
What do you see when you envision wilt at its peak?
Andrew: “I can say that I don't know that I would want to play stadiums for the vibe. Below that, I just want to be doing big theaters.”
Chelsea: “The Wiltern, even. That’s giant.”
Andrew: “The Greek, just doing huge, huge theaters would kind of be the vibe. As big as we could take it. We've been dreaming about what we want just over the past week, and manifesting. I wanna play Coachella. I wanna play the main stage at Desert Daze festival.”
Chelsea: “I wanna do Lollapalooza.”
Andrew: “Australian tour, for sure.”
Chelsea: “That’s so random.”
Aaron: “I have this vision of playing ‘gwen’ or ‘Puberty’ on a late night television show, wherever it is.”
Chelsea: “‘Puberty’ is the name of one of the songs coming out.”
Aaron: “I can see that, and it doesn’t even feel unrealistic.”
Chelsea: “You’ve just got to imagine it, and it will happen.”
Andrew: “Conan has the best music taste.”
Aaron: “Conan has great music taste. We’ll do it on Conan.”
Conan does have great music taste.
Chelsea: “I wanna do SNL.”
Andrew: “My parents, every time I make a song they're like, ‘Andrew, I can hear you playing that on SNL.’ And I'm like, ‘Sure.’ Yeah, we’ll do ‘gwen’ there too.”
You can do all of them!
Chelsea: “Literally, yes. That’s the goal.”
I do want to talk about the rapidity at which you’re growing. Between setting up this interview and now, you’ve gained 30,000 followers. Has that been overwhelming at all?
Chelsea: “Obviously it’s a first world problem, but there's just likes and comments and follows and it's hard to use our phones. I literally have to log out every time.”
Aaron: “I’ve also just never experienced that volume of hate comments.”
Chelsea: “People hate us!”
Aaron: “It’s so crazy how polarizing it is. There’s a clip of the second chorus of ‘gwen’ on Instagram that has 600,000 [views] now. That went viral because everyone was arguing the comments, and it was so extreme. Someone would be like, ‘This sucks ass, this is the worst thing I've ever heard,’ and then someone else would be like, ‘‘gwen’ has a choke hold on me.’ It's just so intense. I try not to acknowledge the gnarly ones.”
Chelsea: “It’s hard not to sometimes. I was planning on being on the social media because I'm the lead singer. I'm also the youngest and probably the most tech savvy. That is not the case at all. I can't handle mean comments, even if they're kind of silly and helping us get views, so [Andrew and Aaron] actually do it and they're doing a great job at it. They comment to everyone, DM everyone, and we're getting such good responses and I think that's very much major props to you guys.”
Andrew: “It totally is overwhelming, but it's also our dreams coming true. It's so cool. I try to make the best out of it. There are plenty of hate comments, but we respond to every person that shares our videos on their stories. We send them a DM, and there's many people that I've just DM’d them the song and they're like, ‘This is insane. I love it.’ So just getting that response on a cool DM is super validating, and there are plenty of likes and plenty of comments and plenty of views that just keep us going, and make us feel like this is totally worth it, you know? It’s mind blowing the rate that it's going up. Two nights ago, it was 20k. It's unbelievable. We're definitely looking for management and stuff like that to facilitate this and make it sustainable so it's not overwhelming, but we're doing our best and this is really all we could ever ask for with the amount of attention we're getting on the first song.”