Wishlist’s mercurial “I’m Sorry” is a hypnotic, restlessly powerful experimental pop reverie from the Naarm/Melbourne duo, diving into fixation, panic, and desire with pulsating production, haunting harmonies, and a fearless sense of release ahead of their debut EP.

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Stream: “I’m Sorry” – Wishlist

A pulse flickers to life, then blooms outward – hypnotic, luminous, and just a little bit unsteady, like a thought you can’t quite shake.

Wishlist’s “I’m Sorry” feels like slipping back into a world that already knows you, one built on instinct, tension, and emotional release. Their third single and first of 2026 doesn’t just continue the story they started last year – it deepens it, pulling listeners further into a sound that feels as intimate as it is expansive.

Grip onto the words that hold me afloat
I’m waiting for the train
that keeps me on course
Blacking out the scene
Blacking out the phone
Fall into the water tree
swinging from the rope

That world has been taking shape quickly, but never carelessly. Wishlist – the Naarm/Melbourne duo of longtime collaborators Stella Farnan and Soren Maryasin – emerged in late 2025 with “Even When I’m Leaving,” a debut that introduced them as experimental pop artists guided by trust, reciprocity, and the shared thrill of chasing sounds until they start to reveal a feeling. As we wrote at the time, Wishlist’s music felt like their “most personal, focused work yet: Experimental pop built not around hierarchy, but reciprocity.” With “I’m Sorry,” that foundation feels even more lived-in: The language sharper, the production more volatile, the emotional stakes drawn deeper into the body.

Pulsating pads and a punchy, percussive beat carry the song forward, each element clicking into place with a kind of restless precision.

The production is alive with movement – warped textures, layered vocals, and unexpected turns that keep unfolding in real time – but it’s the duo’s harmonized delivery that gives “I’m Sorry” its gravity. There’s a seductive weightlessness to it, Farnan and Maryasin’s voices drifting and colliding as the track builds toward moments of reckoning and release, balancing control and chaos in equal measure.

That balance is central to Wishlist’s pull. As individual musicians, Farnan and Maryasin have spent years on stages and in studios with artists including Angie McMahon, Mallrat, and Gretta Ray, bringing the instincts of seasoned touring players and producers into a project that still feels intimate, self-contained, and wonderfully strange. Their songs draw from emotionally charged production, resampled voices, warped instrumentation, and a surreal pop sensibility that makes each track feel both carefully built and caught in motion – tender enough to live inside, but restless enough to keep shifting under your feet.

Holding it down shiny holding it good
Pretending out loud that
I knew it when I should’ve
I’m pulling out the words
They’re spilling from my mouth
Keeping it close but the blood is rushing out

And I hate how I can get like this
And I hold on to the words we missed
But with each turn there’s a longer list
It’s a fine line and I can’t resist

The confession, “And I hate how I can get like this / And I hold on to the words we missed” cuts straight to the core, a line that lingers long after it passes, capturing the loop of fixation and self-awareness that defines the song’s emotional arc. That tension – between knowing and repeating, between clarity and compulsion – pulses through every second, giving the track its urgency and its ache. It’s the kind of lyric that understands panic not as a single breaking point, but as a rhythm you can fall back into before you’ve even realized you’re moving. The words spill, repeat, and tighten around themselves, mirroring a mind trying to name the pattern while still caught inside it.

As the duo explain, the song itself mirrors that push and pull.

“We found the chorus for ‘I’m Sorry’ in one of our earliest writing sessions, but we struggled with it for a while. At a point we managed to make it all come alive just playing acoustic guitars. From there we were stumped, we weren’t sure if we’d manage to get it back in the computer again. We kind of ended up collecting all of these samples that became little arrangement building blocks that we fell in love with. From there we rebuilt it over again until it felt right. That’s how we ended up with kind of eclectic sounds across the track.” Piece by piece, they rebuilt it until it felt right, embracing the eclecticism that now defines its shape.

This reconstruction matters because “I’m Sorry” never sounds like a song chasing polish for polish’s sake. It feels pieced together from nervous energy, fragments of instinct, and little flashes of discovery – each sample and vocal layer acting like another thought entering the room. The result is danceable without losing its unease, dreamy without drifting away from the ache at its center.

The song also arrives as Wishlist move toward their debut EP Big Sign, a project that promises to push their world outward without losing the closeness that made their first releases so compelling.

Its newly announced single “Ceilings” has been described as a bold expansion of their sound, but “I’m Sorry” already points in that direction: Bigger in scope, stranger in texture, and more willing to let its contradictions show. It’s a preview not just of where Wishlist are headed, but of how confidently they’re learning to let their music break its own expectations.

That process speaks directly to what makes Wishlist so compelling – a partnership rooted in experimentation, trust, and a willingness to let the music evolve on its own terms. “I’m Sorry” doesn’t try to resolve its tension; it lives inside it, letting contradiction and emotion coexist without forcing an answer. And in that space, it becomes something restlessly powerful – a song that doesn’t just capture a feeling, but lets you move through it, over and over again, until it finally starts to loosen its grip.

You keep calling and I keep crawling back
(I’m sorry, I’m sorry)
Deep falling towards myself again
(I’m sorry, I’m sorry)
It’s a rhythm
(I’m sorry, I’m sorry)
It’s a rhythm
(I’m sorry, I’m sorry)

That final refrain is where “I’m Sorry” fully gives itself over to the cycle it’s been tracing all along. “You keep calling and I keep crawling back” lands with the ache of recognition, while “Deep falling towards myself again” complicates the surrender: The pull may come from outside, but the descent is inward. By the time the song locks into “It’s a rhythm,” apology becomes less a resolution than a pulse – a repeated motion, a familiar spiral, a pattern the body knows before the heart is ready to break it.

That’s why “I’m Sorry” feels like such a show of strength for Wishlist.

It doesn’t tidy up obsession, panic, or desire into an easy emotional lesson. Instead, Farnan and Maryasin build a world where those feelings can move, refract, and repeat until their shape becomes visible. It’s another breathtaking step from a duo who already sounded fully formed on arrival, and here sound even more fearless – still instinctive, still intimate, but now with a deeper charge running through every flicker, fracture, and release.

Sorry not sorry – Wishlist are an undeniable artist to watch, and with their debut EP out in early July, there has never been a better time to hop on the bandwagon. Let their music wash over you as this mercurial duo pour their hearts out in weightless, wondrous song – one pulse and one feeling at a time.

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Stream: “I’m Sorry” – Wishlist

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