“An Exploration of Trauma”: LA Indie Rock Band wilt on Finding Clarity, Escaping Reality, & Honing Their Sound on Self-Titled Debut EP

LA indie rock band wilt discuss relationships, mental health, and navigating a growing audience in a perspective-shifting, unfiltered chat as they enter the next chapter in their careers with their self-titled debut EP!

Stream: “you’re the one to blame” – wilt

Anyone who has heard wilt’s music knows they have a knack for honesty and vulnerability in their lyrics.

Combining elements of grunge, bedroom pop, indie rock and more, they continuously defy expectations as they explore their music and themselves. While their music may lean towards the darker end of the spectrum, the members themselves are funny and quick-witted, playing off each other with the comfortability of life-long friends. They shift between serious topics and goofing around with ease as they chat with me about lyrics, minivans, bands they love, how they got here, and where they’re headed. And of course, their self-titled EP – set to release on April 5th.

wilt are independent and audacious by nature – with no manager, team, or external producers, they do everything for themselves. Aaron Liebman, a force to be reckoned with as both a guitarist and a producer, says wilt is “really blessed to have three audio engineers in the band.” All five members of the band play their part in every aspect of creating their music, from writing music in their bedrooms to mixing and mastering.

Up until now, wilt have only released singles. This upcoming EP will be their first longer-form body of work, and it promises to satisfy their existing audience and garner a plethora of new listeners. How has the process of creating an EP differed from releasing singles?

Guitarist Andrew Perrea, whose talents permeate every aspect of wilt’s music, shares some insight: “Well, there was totally a learning curve. We had to really figure out what our process was like in real time having already had music out and having attention on us.”

The band nods in agreement.

“We took all the songs that we had that we have been playing live for the past year really since we debuted our live show and started touring. We just made them more cohesive and finally about a month ago we were like ‘Oh! This sounds right. It’s done!’”

So while these songs may be new to most of us, they’ve been living with and reworking them for quite some time. This comes as no surprise, as each track is imbued with a depth and complexity that can only come from months of hard work and contemplation.

Something that really makes wilt stand out is the simultaneous diversity and cohesiveness of their music.

Lead vocalist Chelsea Rifkin, armed with an incredibly strong voice and a talent for writing lyrics, explains how they successfully navigate this balancing act.

“For each song it’s been a little different,” Rifkin tells Atwood Magazine. “It’s been more putting myself in these places that I’ve been in my life, these places where I remember feeling so strongly, because I’ve grown up with mental health problems. That’s really where my creative process starts is getting in that space. It’s also a way to escape – I know a lot of people will say that about music, and a lot of people put their feelings into their music, and for me reflecting on it after the fact really helps me find clarity in situations.”

Rifkin has no set goal or intention when she sits down to write a song; she is not trying to tell a story from song to song, nor is she trying to fit into any molds. Each track (on the EP and in their previous work) stands alone and has a different meaning, both from song to song and amongst the band members.

This sentiment rings especially true in reference to a song titled “more than this,” which will be featured on their upcoming EP. Perrea had originally started writing this piece as a relationship-centered song, depicting feelings of expectation vs. reality in a blossoming romance. However, Rifkin connected with the lyrics for an entirely different reason: “When I heard the song it resonated with me, but I hadn’t really had that kind of relationship at that point in my life. But you know how it does resonate with me? Having mood stabilizers and drugs like that; antidepressants and stuff like that. You can definitely get that a little bit more in the verses of the song.”

Perrea chimes in: “It’s like we took both of our individual feelings of malaise and blended them into one song.”

This is a perfect example of the power and beauty of wilt’s work and music in general; everyone who listens to it can connect to it in different ways, bringing their own life experience and perspectives to a song that could be written with completely different intentions. wilt loves that about their music, and it surely one of the many reasons they have gained a (continuously growing) following in a fairly short period of time. People feel heard and seen when they listen to wilt’s music. They feel less alone.

This impact on their listeners means the world to wilt.

“It’s really surreal how the songs affect people. It’s all we ever wanted” says Perrea, followed by resounding agreement from the rest of the group. They explained how incredible it has been to receive messages from fans and seeing people cover their songs. Liebman says people covering their previously released single “the riff” has been “a very big pinch-me moment.” They never expected or imagined the overwhelmingly positive reaction they received from listeners. Rifkin explains how the band’s impact really hit her after writing and releasing their single “puberty,” a deeply personal and emotional song about Rifkin’s late father.

“Getting so many messages about people who had lost their parents – it made me realize that maybe I do have these writing capabilities, and also it made me think ‘Wow! This is all I’ve ever wanted. My music affecting people. My music helping people through things.’”

These reactions to wilt’s music are sure to continue on with the release of their EP. They released a single off the EP on March 8th, giving listeners a taste of what is to come in April.

Hiding in the cracks
Of all the people that I love
I want my body back.
I’ve been thinking how
I battled with myself
Made my mom proud
But f**ed my mental health.

Clearly, the strong lyricism featured in their singles is carried on in this new (to us, not to them) body of work. Rifkin explains some of the meaning behind this powerful writing: “That one is about someone who was in very close proximity to me growing up who did some not-so-great things and made me have a skewed reality around dating and my body and sexualization, which is where that lyric specifically comes from. The entirety of the song morphs from one facet of that into what everyone in my life expected of me.”

While the group’s writing process is incredibly collaborative, Rifkin does much of the songwriting for wilt, and does not shy away from sharing about her struggles with mental health and the confusion with which she is often confronted when navigating life (as are we all, whether we admit it or not.) The honesty and vulnerability that each member of the band brings to their music makes each song incredibly special.

While there is so much to focus on and unpack lyric-wise, the bass, guitar, and drum element to wilt’s music deserves just as much recognition. Liebman, a self-proclaimed “guitar nerd,” explains how “in the studio, you’re gonna hit the right notes. You’re making a recording. So you can get really granular on these cool sounds – I call it guitar sound design. We can get really creative.” The band’s attention to detail across all their instruments comes across in a huge way throughout their EP, coming together seamlessly through meticulous mixing – which, lest we forget, is all done in house.

So other than powerful lyricism and an incredibly cool soundscape, what else can we expect from this EP?

This question resulted in some giggles from the band. Rifkin shares her thoughts on their upcoming body of work: “It’s definitely a little bit of a trauma dump. A little bit of an exploration through my trauma. So I guess it’s kind of open to interpretation. When I think about the general idea of each song, they’re all pretty dark and sad except for “she wants me too,” which I didn’t write most of, so it kind of makes sense!”

“But even “she wants me too” has elements of confusion and doubt that permeate all of our music.” Perrea chimes in.

Their excitement about this release is palpable, and they are already thinking about writing and releasing new music as soon as their tour wraps. Gaining insight into the process of creating EP (and learning more about the members of the band) has imbued their music with even more meaning.

My conversation with wilt delved further into the nitty-gritty than I can express through this article, full of interesting anecdotes and bared emotions, as well as showcasing the levity and humor that is inherent to the group. Follow along with our chat below and get ready for wilt the EP, out April 5th!

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:: stream/purchase wilt here ::

:: connect with wilt here ::

A CONVERSATION WITH WILT

Andrew Perrea: Of course! Yeah we’re in a van in San Diego! We had a show the other night and today is an off day driving to our next show tonight.

Chelsea Rifkin: Its been really fun! It just started but we went to SXSW in Austin last weekend and did four shows in four days there, so it kind of felt like it already started. We’re all feeling it a little bit.

Aaron Liebman: That was to be predicted. We have an off day on the second day of the tour! We probably could’ve used it a bit later on.

Andrew: Since it’s a pretty quick tour there’s not a lot of off days. There’s a lot of driving.

Chelsea: We rented two minivans this time and it’s been so clutch.

Andrew: It feels less foreign than a tour bus. We’ve all been in a minivan before.

Chelsea: It feels like we’re going to soccer practice or something.

Aaron: I’ll take this one! I’ll give you the quick version. So Chelsea and I were producing – just like producer singer vibes – and it was very bedroom pop oriented. She has this belt of a voice that she subdued, more bedroom pop. It was right before COVID, so it was kind of in that era, in that genre and everything. Then she went to college and we kind of lost touch for a second. When she came back, she booked a session herself and I was like “Is your mom paying for this?” because she was so young, but she was paying out of pocket and I was like “Woah! She is so talented. I don’t really wanna charge her anymore.” So we started figuring out what our new sound was and what that would look like. She wanted to start a band, so I pulled in my session drummer. I was newly friends with this guy (Andrew), so we got Andy in on the game. Then we found a bass player – we got DM’d by a bunch of bass players in LA, then we found Jake (Jake waves) who went to highschool with Chelsea. That’s the quick version. I know Dan the drummer, who’s not here right now, through Guitar Center, and he’s a producer as well, Andy’s a producer, I’m a producer. So we’re really blessed to have basically three audio engineers in the band.

Aaron: Thank you!

Andrew: We’re really proud that we do it all ourselves. But it also drives us insane.

Chelsea: We have literally no team whatsoever – when it comes to the creative process, the sound, the business side of things…

Aaron: It all stays within the band.

Chelsea: It all stays with us!

Andrew: Thank you! We are too.

Andrew: Well, there was totally a learning curve, because the band really took off right from the start and so we had to really figure out what our process was like in real time having already had music out and having attention on us. There was no time to develop it before people started paying attention. When it came to making the EP we were still in the mindset that we had in 2023 of just making singles and writing songs. These were literally the first ten songs we were writing and it came to the point where we were like “Well, we know we need to put a fuller length thing out, and we have all these songs. Like Aaron always says, we kind of started the EP halfway done. We had all of these songs that were sounding okay –

Aaron: More than demos, less than finished.

Andrew: Yeah, somewhere at 75%. We really just locked it all in in the last couple of months. We took all the songs that we had that we have been playing live for the past year really since we debuted our live show and started touring. We just made them more cohesive and finally about a month ago we were like “Oh! This sounds right. It’s done!”

Aaron: We had to start over a little bit, in the sense of what makes an EP an EP. In pop music, production can be vastly different, right? But in rock it’s the same drum kit, and we had songs where we recorded drums in different rooms, on different kits, on different mics. So we went back just for four of them and just tracked all the drums again. That helped a ton.

Andrew: When we started we didn’t have a consistent process for recording anything. For Chelsea, different microphones would make her voice sound different, make the song sound different. So just in the last couple months for this tour we decided what wilt is gonna sound like for this EP.

Chelsea: For writing the songs, it’s kind of been a different process for each one. Specifically for this EP, a lot of these songs me and Andy just wrote in his bedroom. We call it “bedroom rock” for that reason. He would make these little demos that were sounding kind of post-punky and then it ended up not sounding that post-punky. I’d sing over them, we’d work on lyrics together. For “you’re the one to blame,” since that was one of the first ones we wrote, I had started writing it and then I realized it was just “Creep.”

Radiohead is my favorite band, but we had to change it up a bit and it ended up being one of our most crowd-pleasing songs. We have another song coming off the EP called “she wants me too” which is also one of our favorites and seems to be a crowd favorite. That one we wrote with Andrew’s best friend Lee, and she’s a big Taylor Swift and pop music fan, and it was really interesting writing with her because that’s not really the music we listen to. It definitely comes out in the songwriting with a more catchy hook and chorus. I love that about it. I’m really proud of that song, and I feel like that’s the one that’s gonna be our song, you know? Fingers crossed it gets on some playlists!

Andrew: It was not an easy process. We’re really proud of where it’s at. “You’re the one to blame” might actually be the first song Chelsea and I wrote together.

Chelsea: Yeah I think it was!

Andrew: Songs like ”gwen” and “moved along” – Chelsea wrote them before wilt and the band finished them. For “you’re the one to blame,” Chelsea came to my room with some lyrics and a melody and we came out like an hour later with the song basically written.

Chelsea: Yeah absolutely! So I write pretty much all the lyrics except for “she wants me too” – that was more collaborative – and same thing with the song “more than this.” Andrew and I wrote that together. He wrote the hooky-ass chorus and the bridge which I am so obsessed with. It’s my favorite song on the EP. I wrote the verses. For each song it’s been a little different. I found it hard to sit down and think about how I’m feeling in the moment and put that on paper. It feels a little too personal – I don’t know if I’m at that level of writing yet where I’m able to just gush it all out. It’s been more putting myself in these places that I’ve been in my life, these places where I remember feeling so strongly, because I’ve grown up with mental health problems, like every other artist. That’s really where my creative process starts is getting in that space.

It’s also a way to escape – I know a lot of people will say that about music, and a lot of people put their feelings into their music, and for me reflecting on it after the fact really helps me find clarity in situations. Especially with a song like “you’re the one to blame.” That one is about someone who was in very close proximity to me growing up who did some not-so-great things and made me have a skewed reality around dating and my body and sexualization, which is where that lyric specifically comes from. The entirety of the song morphs from one facet of that into what everyone in my life expected of me. I grew up doing theater and acapella and professional stuff. That world is all I wanted to be in but its also super fucking hard for kids. There’s so much pressure – it’s actually insane. So that’s pretty much what “you’re the one to blame” is about.

The process with each song is different. “more than this” – like I said is my favorite on the EP – I think that one just reflects most of how I’ve been feeling lately, I guess. Like I said, I’ve struggled with mental health throughout my life and when Andrew had written this song, he’d kinda written it as more of a relationship song, where he “liked it better before we got together,” before we got in this relationship, “before we kissed,” you know? When I heard the song it resonated with me, but I hadn’t really had that kind of relationship at that point in my life. But you know how it does resonate with me? Having mood stabilizers and drugs like that; antidepressants and stuff like that.

You can definitely get that a little bit more in the verses: “I’ve been so numb, don’t know what my voice sounds like.” That’s very much like when you first go on antidepressants and mood stabilizers, you don’t feel shit! You don’t feel anything! While my life was getting a little more stable and a little better, I didn’t have my strong-ass feelings anymore. I felt completely dehumanized, like I lost my personality. So that one hit the hardest for me personally. I think that’s the most personal song on there, and I’m probably the proudest of that one.

Andrew: It’s like we took both of our individual feelings of malaise and blended them into one song.

Chelsea: Into one depressing-ass song!

Chelsea: Honestly, I would never have imagined that. I have a lot of confidence in my voice and my performance capabilities. Like I said, I did theater! So I’m very used to that. Something that I’m not super confident in is my writing skills. I don’t think I’m the best songwriter – I mean, I think I have some relatable lyrics or whatever, but a lot of times when I’m writing lyrics I don’t feel like I’m particularly creative or particularly touchy. The one I’ve gotten the most compliments on is a song called “puberty.” My dad died two years prior, so it was deeply personal. I wrote that on the beach with our old bassist and I didn’t really think anything of it. I was like puberty… that’s such a stupid thing to put into a sad song. How can I say as little as possible while saying as much as possible? I was a little scared of writing my feelings completely into it, so I describe the situations throughout my life with my dad in the least amount of words possible. I didn’t think anything of it – who names a song “puberty”?

Andrew: It felt like a bold choice at the time.

Chelsea: Then getting so many messages about people who had lost their parents – it made me realize that maybe I do have these writing capabilities, and also it made me think “Wow! This is all I’ve ever wanted. My music affecting people. My music helping people through things.” Since I was younger, since I was like 10 – no younger! I have always known I wanted to be a rockstar. I literally have videos of my dad saying “This is my daughter Chelsea. She’s gonna be a famous rockstar” when I was like four or five! I was always so into it.

Andrew: It’s really surreal how the songs affect people and having them get out there. It’s all we ever wanted. It can feel really intangible. It was hard for me to process “you’re the one to blame,” the song Chelsea and I wrote in my bedroom and literally finished it like a month ago. Then to see it on this playlist next to The Black Keys on a Spotify official playlist! It’s hard to fathom that I made that and that’s me.

Aaron: In a bedroom! And “the riff” has been crazy too. When you name a song “the riff,” people are gonna cover it. I didn’t really expect that. It was a rejected riff from my last band! Just this morning I got a DM of a guy being like “Is this how you play it?” and he sent me a voice memo.

Chelsea: There’s been so many covers!

Aaron: That’s been a very big pinch-me moment. Even Remo Drive played a couple bars from it.

Andrew: Wait what? I didn’t hear that! I literally didn’t hear that.

Aaron: Yeah! At the Phoenix show they were like “Give it up for wilt!” and playing “the riff.”

Andrew: Oh my God I totally missed that. That’s awesome.

Aaron: Remo Drive is a band that I very much looked up to in my early twenties, so that was crazy.

Chelsea: So like I said we have no team whatsoever. Usually a band has a touring agent so they pitch you for these opening slots. They have someone basically bragging for you. We don’t have that. I don’t wanna say anything has been handed to us, but it’s pretty much fell into our laps!

Aaron: We wait, we try to make ourselves as dope as possible, and hope people hit us up!

Chelsea: Our last tour, we did with a band called Lovejoy, and it was when we were definitely way smaller. Not that we’re huge now, but we were definitely way smaller. Way less of an audience. They emailed us!

Aaron: I’m gonna go out on a limb, and I can’t confirm this, but I think Remo Drive saw the Weezer riff we covered. I think that’s how they found us. I think Lovejoy saw a couple viral videos. We can’t pinpoint it exactly but I’m sure we came up on their For You pages, scrolling just like everyone else.

Chelsea: Or Discover Weekly!

Aaron: Cheapest song that we’ve made. We recorded Chelsea’s vocals on a hundred dollar snare drum mic and all the guitars are from this forty dollar Amazon pedal. And of course it’s our top song!

Aaron: “bite my tongue” is really cool. I think it might be one of the purest wilt collaborations. I wrote the verse riff, Andrew wrote the chorus riff, Chelsea wrote the vocals and melody, Dan and Jake thickened it up like flour. I’m pretty excited about that one.

Andrew: It’s also really cathartic for us because that one was in the works for a long time. We started writing that before “gwen” came out. It was originally supposed to be the next single after “puberty.” We were almost done with it, then we came to the conclusion that ithe song was amazing but it’s just not a single. It’s more laid-back and expansive.

Chelsea: I would also say that “bite my tongue” is a good example of what the process of writing a larger body of work would look like, which we will hopefully release within the year. With “gwen,” for example, it was very grungy and rock-heavy. We’ve kind of ventured out into a more indie pop/rock kind of vibe. A lot of stuff that we’ve been writing more recently has been in that rock vein. I think “bite my tongue” is a good example of where we’ve been heading.

Aaron: We have plans, but it never seems to go exactly like we think it will.

Chelsea: We have goals more than plans I think. We’re playing our first festival – it’s called Shabang; it’s a Cal Poly SLO festival in May. Then we’re just hoping to get on another really sick tour in an opening slot. That’s been really working for us so far. I think that’s our main goal. We’d love to do a UK tour next year. That’s a really big goal for us because like half of our listening base is in the UK and Europe.

Aaron: Planning for another release later in the year. That would be ideal.

Chelsea: Hopefully a full length album, if we get there. Maybe a music video for the first time.

Andrew: When the tour is wrapped we’ll do the festival and then I think we are ready to write some more music. These songs have been in the works for awhile so it’s not like we just wrote them. We’ve just been figuring out production and recording.

Chelsea: They’re not new to us by any means. We’ve been playing them since our very first show.

Chelsea: Every time we see a new band perform we get some new ideas. We’ve only had one show with Remo Drive so far, but seeing them – they have these awesome little transitions and band moments within the set and we’re like “Damn we wanna do that!” Very inspiring.

Aaron: You know what I’m really excited for? I’ve been talking about this with Andrew, but he and I are at the age where we don’t get obsessed with bands the same way we did when we were younger.

Chelsea: I still do!

Aaron: But Chelsea does! I remember finding huge inspirations and really big genre changes for me when I was 23 and 24, so I’m really curious and really excited to see what hits Chelsea’s ears and what ends up stoking her fire as the years go on.

Andrew: For me, at SXSW, everyone pretty much called it the last night and I was still buzzing after our show. So I went out and literally right outside of the hotel I heard this amazing band and I went down and it was this band called Narrow Head playing. My girlfriend loves them but I had never locked in on their sound, and I was blown away. Narrow Head was amazing, Voyeur out of New York, this Texas band Glare. Those three sets between midnight and three in the morning – and everything at SXSW – was super inspirational to me. Energy I want to be channeling energy as we make more songs.

Andrew: Well, Chelsea pulled up “Live Through This” in the car –

Chelsea: That’s my favorite album of all time!

Andrew: So we’re still rinsing that and Slow Pulp and a lot of the stuff that we’ve been talking about since day one.

Aaron: How does it work its way into the music? The guitars are loud.

Chelsea: The guitars are loud and we also love Weezer. Opening for them is a big dream of ours. We definitely take some of their tones and put them in our music.

Aaron: We’re guitar nerds, so we’ll go to the tone zone. Really dial it in. I think that’s one of those things where it differs live, because live people just wanna hear you hit the right notes. They care less about what the guitars sound like. But in the studio, you’re gonna hit the right notes. You’re making a recording. So you can get really granular on these cool sounds – I call it guitar sound design, almost. We can get really creative, because in 2024 a recording is not just a four-piece band and that’s it. It still happens, but it’s not like The Strokes or Arctic Monkeys anymore. They have production. It’s really cool – Slow Pulp will do some things that might be outside of a typical rock band, and it’s really cool to hear that.

Chelsea: Specifically the song “High” – that’s like the first wilt reference song. You’d love them.

Chelsea: It’s definitely a little bit of a trauma dump. A little bit of an exploration through my trauma.

Aaron: That’s our genre!

Chelsea: A lot of people who have listened to it or gotten a sneak peak have thought it was a break up album. It is not. I had not had a real relationship while I wrote all those songs. So I guess it’s kind of open to interpretation. When I think about the general idea of each song, they’re all pretty dark and sad except for “she wants me too,” which I didn’t write most of, so it kind of makes sense!

Andrew: But even “she wants me too” has elements of confusion and doubt that permeate all of our music.

Chelsea: It’s a lot of confusion. A lot of I don’t know what the fuck is going on.

Andrew: “every now and then” also has this reflection on being younger and nostalgia, more innocence I think.

Chelsea: It all has its own little twisted trauma dump within happy-sounding music. Like “moved along” for example (I know it’s not on the EP) but that’s such a good example of a happy-sounding song and the lyrics are like “I am thrown by the things that I feel when I’m alone” but it’s so fun and dance-y, you know? That’s my favorite kind of music: sad-ass lyrics with such a fun melody and chorus.

Andrew: EP is out April 5th! We really want people to check it out. We’re on the road until April 18th so come see us with Remo Drive. Really chill venues. And we’re pretty funny outside of the serious music stuff!

Aaron: We don’t take ourselves too seriously. You’ll be seeing plenty more memes on our instagram.

Andrew: That’s the vibe!

Chelsea: I don’t think too much about what I’m gonna say beforehand, so these interviews are always really formative and you asked really great questions!

Andrew: We’re writing the lore in real time. Thank you! Take care.

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