Before becoming Wisp, Natalie R. Lu was just a 19-year-old computer science student at San Francisco State University who played music on the side. That all changed when she uploaded a track called “Your face” to TikTok and SoundCloud in 2023. It went viral overnight, resulting in a deal with Interscope Records and quickly becoming the new face of nü gaze. Since that seismic moment, Wisp has toured with her peers Slowdive and Whirr (the latter being her favorite band), played at this year’s Coachella, and today released her long-anticipated debut album, If Not Winter.
Read more: 10 bands that represent the roots and future of shoegaze as we know it
Wisp largely made the album with Max Epstein of Photographic Memory, who worked on her Pandora EP, while taking cues from Nothing and Superheaven. Throughout its dozen tracks, she builds out an enchanting, pedal-warped world, unafraid to get heavy (“Breathe onto me”), address her own insecurities (“Black swan”), or swoon over a crush (“Mesmerized”). The LP clings to “the ethereal, fairy tale-esque stuff [that] circulates around Greek mythology, the mermaids and the angels, and I really want to incorporate more mystical creatures into my music, which will be fun to experiment with,” she teased in her cover interview last year while keeping the rest of the details close to her chest. That imagery is unmissable in her recent videos, which feel mystical and far away — exactly the kind of escapism that the genre has fostered since its inception in the late ’80s.
Below, the burgeoning shoegaze star takes us through the story behind every song.
“Sword”
Starting off with “Sword,” I wrote this one with Alden [Gardner Robinson, aldn] and Gabe [Greeland] about seven months ago now, and I was trying to replicate the sound of the very first song that we made together. Getting to do a couple more studio sessions and figuring out the balance of our chemistry and our personal styles, I feel like we were able to execute the idea super well, and it’s one of my favorite tracks on the album. The chorus is so heavy-hitting, and the music video is also one of my favorites. I wrote this track about the feeling of being hidden by someone that you trust and feeling insecure because of that.
“Breathe onto me”
I wrote this one around the time that I wrote “See you soon” and “Once then…” So it was a while back, but I revisited it, and I gave it a new sound. I wrote a couple different lyrics and changed up some of the melodies, and the guitars were completely different. But I ultimately just decided to include this on the album because I thought it’d be a nice touch of my old music and to showcase just how I’ve grown as an artist and how I connected a new sound to an old sound.
“Save me now”
The next track on the album is “Save me now,” and I wrote this one originally with Colin [Brittain], who drums in Linkin Park, and it was such a fun experience. This was our very first and only song that we wrote together. But after we wrote it, I changed up the melodies a bit, and I brought it back in with Stint. We just molded it into the song it is today. I think it’s super fun. It’s a bit heavier than the other stuff, but it’s also light and has a positive tone to it. I wrote this one about a crush that I had at the time, so the lyrics are pretty straightforward.
“After dark”
I wrote this one with Alden and Gabe, too. It’s definitely one of my slower and more moody tracks, but also very vulnerable. I feel like the songwriting on this is some of my favorite. [It’s] about the feeling of falling out of love for someone and not knowing how to handle that feeling and not knowing what action to take.
“Guide light”
Then “After dark” goes into “Guide light,” which I wrote with grayskies in London. Actually, we were supposed to meet up in Brazil, but there were a bunch of visa problems, so we ended up going to London and meeting up there, and it was my first time ever meeting him in person. He produced “Your face,” “See you soon,” “Once then,” and “Enough for you,” so it was a full-circle moment, being able to just produce with him in person and play the song out as a full band. We had Liam [Toon] from bar italia and his friend play drum and bass. It was just so much fun, and I feel like that really made me just want to play as a full band more going on.
“Latvia”
“Latvia” is just an instrumental track, but it’s also one of my favorites because I wrote this about the feeling of filming the “Sword” music video. There was a scene at the beginning of the music video where I’m walking towards the castle gates. In real life when we were filming this scene, the bells started ringing. Usually when the bells hit the hour, they play this cute little chime, and Walt’s music started just blasting over the speakers. But because the castle was in the middle of nowhere, it was so echoey, and it felt so ethereal, and I felt like an actual princess living in a dream. So I wanted to write an instrumental that transported me back to that exact moment.
“If not winter”
This is honestly my favorite song on the album, and I feel like it has some of my best lyric writing. It’s a similar theme to “After dark,” and it’s also about the feeling of falling out of love with someone, but this one has more thoughts of guilt, resentment, and this back and forth with yourself, whether you should let something good go and whether or not that’s destructive or honestly helpful to you. Sometimes you just have to follow your heart and do what’s not best for you, but what you think will make you feel better.
“Mesmerized”
This one I wrote with Max [Epstein, Photographic Memory] almost a year ago now, and I kind of forgot about the track until I was scrolling through my files and I found it again. We gave it a new sound, fresh lyrics, a fresh vibe. This song really gave the album a heavier vibe that I felt it was missing in the early stages. So I’m really happy about this one, and I wrote [it] about this guy that I was borderline obsessed with after meeting him. If he ever listens to this song, I hope he knows it’s about him.
“Serpentine”
After “Mesmerized,” it goes into “Serpentine.” I wrote “Serpentine” also with Max, but his friend Darcy was the one who produced the majority of it. This one is definitely more upbeat, and I wanted a song that felt like summer and felt happy and positive, and it’s just a laid-back love song that I think is super catchy. I could honestly see myself listening to it even after the album is out. So I’m really proud of this one, and I am hoping that other people like it, too.
“Get back to me”
This one is about these two friends that I used to have that were dating, and they honestly had a pretty rough relationship with each other, and getting to hear both sides of the story and their experiences. I just wrote the song about the way that they felt with each other, and it was a great exercise for me not to just write about my own experiences, but other people’s experiences as well.
“Black swan”
This is about my insecurities being in the public light and seeing all these videos and pictures of myself and not knowing what is reality and how other people perceive my physical appearance. It’s something that I’ve been struggling with ever since becoming Wisp and being someone that hates being in front of the camera and didn’t like it at all growing up. It was a very big transition and something that I’m still learning to get used to.
“All i need”
This one is almost purely acoustic, and I wanted this song to just be very light and raw because it’s a homage to how I started music and how I started writing my own songs in my bedroom during COVID. My mom had given me her hand-me-down acoustic guitar, and I would just play on it and write my own lyrics and write songs in that way. So I think it’s really sweet to end off the album — with a time capsule.
