Wishy Deserves Your Attention
Wishy (photo by Rian Archer, courtesy of Terrorbird Media)
Wishy is no stranger to contradiction. The Indianapolis five-piece’s latest album, Nature’s Pill, is both their most cohesive project to date, yet it is also an album that isn’t easily categorized, full of enigmatic lyrics that flit between euphoria, despair, and absurdity, and sonic influences ranging from garage rock to shoegaze and dream pop. Their creative process is organic and free-flowing, seemingly unconcerned with putting up appearances or making music in any way besides what feels right in the moment. You can sense this ethos as you listen to Nature’s Pill. Entertaining, exuberant, and in your face, it demands your attention without trying.
The band’s lead vocalists and songwriters, Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites, sat down with Off the Record for an interview just ahead of Wishy’s headline tour in North America, sharing more about their songwriting process, insights into their sophomore album, and what it means to be a band in 2026.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You guys played a show last weekend, Wishyfest. I would love to hear how that went. I know that was kind of the start of your headline tour, and that it was in your hometown, Indianapolis. What is Wishyfest exactly, and how did it go?
Nina Pitchkites: We were deciding what we wanted to do for our album release show several months ago, and we were like, what if we did a festival of sorts, where it's a bunch of bands from around the Midwest and friends of ours?
And we also wanted to donate the money to a good cause. So there's a local organization in Indianapolis called Indy Food Not Bombs, which is a mutual aid, harm reduction organization that kind of represents underrepresented people in the community and provides some resources. So that's kind of how it came about, and it went better than I could have imagined. We had a great turnout — it almost sold out. The venue itself is very cool, like an old-school, duckpin bowling alley that they've since converted into a venue. We played some of our first shows there and have gone to DIY shows there over the years.
It sounds like a full-circle moment for you guys. With this tour, you have about 25 shows over the next two months. What are you guys doing differently on this tour (besides, of course, having your new discography with Nature's Pill)?
Kevin Krauter: This will be our first tour with both a sound engineer and a merch person. And we're renting a van that's a lot nicer than the van we've been touring in for the past handful of years. We finally retired my old van.
I'm excited. It's like everyone we're bringing with us is all homies from Indiana. Our front-of-house sound engineer is our homie, and our merch person is our friend Conor, who designed all of our album artwork. Yeah, it's exciting to have more friends on the road with us.
I want to ask about album art for a second since you brought that up. I'm a little curious about the direction of that why you guys went with that as the album cover.
Nina: It's mostly found objects on the cover, like the horn on the back cover is a real horn that Conor bought off of Facebook, and [she and] her boyfriend, Gordon, got this archival camera from a local museum in Indianapolis that was used to be used to take photos of objects in the museum for archival purposes. It was a labor of love. I mean, they spent so long on it. I mean, weeks, if not months, on just getting the front and the back cover perfect. It’s just so many little details like that that were just meticulously thought of. It was really like Conor’s own vision for the album cover from start to finish. We sent her a mood board of ideas and stuff, but we were just kind of like, do whatever you want. She's also like a friend of ours. I've known her since I was a kid.
Cover art for Nature’s Pill
Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot of DIY energy infused in this album, including the cover. I'd love to hear more about the recording process because it seems it was a bit more organic, in terms of recording the album in one room versus with Triple Seven and recording that album in a studio. So I'd love to hear kind of what you guys were doing differently in terms of the recording process and writing process as well on this album compared to your debut.
Kevin: I think there was just a bit more intention behind everything, with writing and recording. I think a main M.O. has just been “Trim the fat.” No wasted movements or effort. That's sort of the ethos going into a lot of the songs. We wanted them to feel very immediate and a no-wasted-time kind of thing. And going into the studio, recording how we did at Ben [Lumsdaine]'s house in his small room, just being like, “This is what we have at our disposal.” We don't need a big studio space. We can make everything in this small room and make it work with the tools that we have.
And then when we were thinking of titles for the album, we were skimming through a bunch of lyrics of various songs throughout the album and “nature's pill” [in “Sensational”] stuck out as something that just sounded kind of catchy — that sounds like a classic album title.
Nina: We take things one song at a time and then put them all together. We do want to kind of tailor it to be around a central theme, but that's kind of an afterthought. We just want to write 10 to 12 good songs and see how they fit together. Usually they do, and also, it kind of doesn't matter if they don't fit because, what does that even mean?
We don't start with a theme necessarily. That's just kind of like something that grows organically later. Like, we'll have all the songs together, and we see, ok, there are these themes of yearning and limerence and sense of self, and all these little themes that just organically come together. Most of our songs typically revolve around a very similar vibe, so at the end of the day, it's not hard when the songs all come together for it to make sense.
Kevin: They're all Wishy songs at the end of the day. I feel like just being a band for as long as we have now, I think the chemistry is good enough that we've sort of organically developed an identity as a band. So there’s a more well-established wheelhouse to operate in and explore new territories from a position of confidence.
This happens to me a lot where I'll be writing a song and then just sort of come up with lyrics that feel good to sing or sound good, and I'm not thinking too deeply about them. Then, months later, I'll think, woah, that actually perfectly described where I was at the time, and I didn't even realize it. I only realized it now, looking back. And I think that's kind of something that happened with everything that came together with this album, from the artwork to the title and the overall vibe — it came together pretty organically on its own.
Sounds like you guys have a very kind of non-judgmental kind of ethos in terms of writing, and you can really feel that on the album because it feels very immediate when you listen to it. And yet it still has this cohesion to it, and there are so many interesting through lines. I'm curious, as you were writing these songs, if you noticed this theme of dissonance and a kind of distress or existential dread about the world?
Kevin: Yeah, I think so. Well, I feel like me and Nina are both really sentimental, capital R romantics. And it's funny to be that way, in this day and age. Like there's so much shit just being thrown at you. We're like very much people of 2026, and we’re subjects and victims of the same things most people are. Yet there's still time for me to yearn in some old-fashioned fucking way. That's like a funnier experience. I think a lot of songs are about laughing at yourself while being able to still have this romantic, sentimental type of mindset when the whole world feels chaotic and kind of meaningless sometimes. So, I think a lot of songs on this album meet at that sort of crossing point.
I know you guys have known each other since high school. Since then, how has your songwriting relationship progressed, particularly for the collaboration on Nature's Pill?
Kevin: We definitely wrote more together on this album. And then historically, I think I have in the past, definitely like more intentional, like sitting down and being like, yo, let's get together and play guitar and try to hammer out some lyrics, because this new song we're working on and stuff like that. Um,
Nina: For this album, everyone in the band has a songwriting credit, more or less, which has not been said for past releases. So that's really exciting.
Watch the official video for “All The Rage” on YouTube.
The outro on “Shift” is a voicemail from your grandmother, Nina, and I'd love to hear more about that. Why did you choose that particular voicemail, and why is it on “Shift” specifically as a song?
Kevin: We were collecting random bits of voicemails, and we thought maybe it'd be fun to throw some stuff on the album between the tracks here and there. And Nina had sent that one over, and we were all just like, oh my god, it's so precious. One day, Ben and I were mixing “Shift,” and the ending is very abrupt. So I felt like something needed to happen right at the end. And then I pulled that voicemail up, and I was like, oh, that's perfect. It just fit perfectly.
Nina: I had no idea they were even gonna put that in there. He sent the mixes, and I was pleasantly surprised when I heard that, and it was super touching. She had died about a year prior at that point, and I was really close with her. And so it was such a great way to immortalize a wonderful woman.
I just love a voicemail, too, on an album in general. I think it just brings such a real, human sentiment to the table.
Is there anything that you haven't done yet with Wishy in terms of experimental things or maybe recording styles or things you definitely want to try out in the future?
Nina: I think we've talked about getting strings more on songs. And work with more musicians like that, maybe get some horns on there.
Kevin: No real bucket list items, but it’s fun to use old equipment and old gear. When we were recording with Ben, he's got like weird little auxiliary percussion instruments sitting around in his studio that we would play and throw on random parts of the album. Like, on “Freak 99,” there's like a little steel drum thingy on the chorus that you can kind of barely hear that are like these weird, welded pieces of steel or aluminum, and they just happened to be perfectly in key with the song.
“Freak 99” is one I've been sitting with more recently. It feels very disturbing in an interesting way, just sonically. Then, lyrically, it felt even more abstract than some of the other songs on the album. And I know you guys have talked about how you're less of a confessional band and more kind of interested in kind of playing with things, playing with the truth, playing with what's happened in real life, playing with emotions. Specifically, with this song, “Freak 99,” like where did it come from and what was the process like to kind of craft it?
Kevin: That one definitely felt distinct as I was writing it. I just wanted to inhabit a sort of stream of consciousness, beatnik kind of vibe with the lyrics. Because I think the song is kind of about ruminating on social capital and your idea of coolness or taste or whatever that means. And it's like an endless wrestling match with what that means to you and how you do relate to that.
It's interesting you say “social capital.” I'm kind of curious, particularly as a band in 2026, I feel like there are so many channels to engage with in terms of social media and Spotify and all of these kind of overwhelming ways of finding new fans and distributing your music. How do you guys sort of see yourselves within this kind of very noisy, oversaturated music era we're in, where seemingly anyone can record something and throw it on Spotify, and people go viral for random things?
Nina: We don't love posting on our Instagram. It’s not that we're bad at it, but it's like pulling teeth sometimes to put yourself out there and be like, “Listen to us, buy our shit.” That doesn't always feel good — “Spend money on our crap.” But at the same time, we're trying to have this be our full-time job, so you have to capitulate to those things. But we try to have fun with it as much as we can. It's this cognitive dissonance of, this feels slimy, but at the same time, I want us to succeed as a band.
Kevin: You start a music project, and it feels like this precious thing. And taking it to market feels icky, just inherently. But I feel like I've been trying to get more comfortable with the idea that we're just another booth at the farmer's market. We spent time cultivating this music and the product itself doesn't feel like it suffered, or its integrity suffered too much, in the process of making it and bringing it to market. At the very least, I'm proud of what we make and can feel confident saying, “This is our music. Check it out.”
Nina: I always say your dream job is still a job. But it's worth it.
Watch the official video for “Covergirl” on YouTube.
I know a lot of times Wishy is compared to kind of ’90s shoegaze and dream pop. I totally see those comparisons, but I'm also curious kind of what you guys see as sort of the biggest sonic influences, particularly for Nature's Pill.
Nina: Well, I think we're both very twee inspired. We always talk about The Bats and like how they're a big inspiration for our music and songwriting style. And Broken Social Scene, that's a huge one. We were listening to a lot of The Primitives and The Go-Go's during the recording process. So a lot of ’80s pop music.
Kevin: And “Sensational,” there's a real Saint Etienne moment. That's a band that we worship.
How about on a “Blitz”? Any particular influences there?
Kevin: There's the sort of bending guitar thing — that was a real Yuck moment. I love that band.
Nina: And for “Covergirl,” [guitarist] Dimitri [Morris] wrote the chord progression for that song, and then I came up with some other guitar parts and lyrics for it, and I was like, damn, this would make a really great shoegaze song. So I guess like I was just largely inspired by shoegaze as a whole for that song.
What’s next for Wishy?
Nina: Doing the tour and just enjoying the fruits of our labor. We all love going on tour. It has its hard moments, but we're all in agreement that this is what we want to be doing. And so I'm just excited to do that. And I just love seeing, like, the whole country. I think I'm proud to be an American in that we have such a geographically diverse country. Like, the politics of this country are shit, but anytime we go on tour, I'm always blown away by the beauty of it all. And to go on tour with my best friends is so precious. Like, who gets to do that? You know, not many people get to really do that.
Kevin, Nina mentioned that you guys are moving to LA soon. So, are you excited for that? And how will that impact Wishy as a whole?
Kevin: Well, we don't plan on stopping. You know, maybe chilling out a little bit after this cycle of touring this album is done. I know Nina and I are both trying to work on some solo music. So yeah, we'll see what the next season brings.
Nina: Yeah, we all want to be a band as long as humanly possible.
Wishy is on tour in North America this fall. Listen to their new album, Nature’s Pill, out now.
