Northern Transmissions: You guys have a new record on the way, your sophomore effort, Nature’s Pill. What major differences are there between this record and your last album, your debut, Triple Seven?

Kevin Krauter: I think one of the main differences is that Triple Seven was a sort of amalgamation of a lot of songs from different chapters of our time as a band. A bit more of a patchwork, in that way, whereas this album is more of a focused effort, I’d say. Preparing all the songs for this album all happened in a much more condensed timeframe. I wouldn’t say there’s too much of a hard theme to everything, but it’s a bit more cohesive.

NT: So, Triple Seven</em> was more of a collection of songs?

KK: Yeah, this one feels a bit more intentional.

NT: You guys also have a new song coming out tomorrow, “Sensational”. I was wondering what the story behind that song is?

KK: That one came about from just jamming during soundcheck. It was this bassline that Mitch [Collins] was just messing around with, and he would just play it while we were setting up for shows and soundchecking. I just kept trying to noodle around and find something to play on top of this bassline he had, and I came up with something and had some other ideas that ended up fitting with it. Yeah, we just made a whole song out of this idea we were jamming on. It’s sort of just a fun party song.

NT: It makes sense you’d say party song, ‘cause the little snippet I heard sounds very much like early 2000’s pop rock. The video also reminded me of “Ned’s Declassified”.

KK: Hell yeah! The video was made by our extremely talented friend Jess Dunn from Indianapolis. She’s a genius, I’ll say it.

NT: You guys get tagged with a lot of different labels, whether it’s twee pop, shoegaze, etc. When you’re writing music, do you go into it trying to write songs with those specific sounds in mind, or is it just what happens when you guys get together?

KK: Sometimes. Sometimes, there’ll be a song where we’re like, “this one’s a real twee-popper”, or “this one’s a real shoegazer”. It comes down to the song. We try not to be super hardline in our definition of genre influence; it’s more of a specific vibe of a band or a song that we’re mimicking or emulating, rather than “I want this to sound like whatever nebulous genre you can name”. I feel like that’s just not enough info usually to inspire a song, y’know? At least for me, I hold myself to a bit more of a standard. I’m gonna need a bit more influence and inspiration to really make something interesting to me.

NT: Are there any influences on the music of Wishy that people may not expect, or might be surprised to hear?

KK: As far as curveballs, I don’t know about that. If we were to get into the nitty-gritty of naming our influences, people would probably be like, “That makes sense”. I can’t think of anything that would totally throw people off. There are some idiosyncrasies with what Nina [Pitchkites] and I are into. We both grew up doing choir, so we both grew up singing and listening to 2000’s pop music. She’s got a sister and a brother, and I have four sisters. There was a lot of 90’s-2000’s girl pop kind of stuff around both of us. I think we met at a specific point in that arena. Same with dream-pop stuff, but I can’t think of anything that’s a total curveball.

NT: Are there any 2000’s pop artists you’d like to shout out?

KK: I mean, some Sheryl Crow/Michelle Branch kinda vibe. You’ll definitely find Nina and me really rocking out to some of that.

NT: You’ve been on tour for three weeks, just about to wrap up this run with Beach Bunny. When you’ve been playing songs off the new record, how do you think the crowd’s been reacting to them? Do you think they translate well live?

KK: I think so; I hope so. People clap and go “woo!”, so I think they like them. I definitely like them. We’re having a lot of fun playing the new songs; we definitely get really bored with playing the old songs. Before we left for this tour, we were like, “Maybe we should only play the two songs that are out already”, but then we were like, “Nah, we wanna play more new ones!” We change it up some nights depending on the mood.

Pre-order Nature’s Pill by Wishy HERE