Wishy
Nature’s Pill
WINSPEAR
Call it jangle, twee, or dream pop. The terminology doesn’t matter. The genre that Wishy works within—full of strummy guitars, honey-sweet harmonies, and drums as crisp as autumn air—is frequently devastating. Artists from The Smiths to The Sundays used the signature sweetness of jangling guitar to temper the hurt at the heart of their music. The result is a kind of alchemy, turning heartbreak, grief, and loneliness into something bittersweet. From The Cranberries to The Cure, jangle pop endures because it’s so damn effective at making melancholy feel so good.
Wishy has no interest in being devastating. There is no unspoken chill to the Indianapolis-based five-piece’s music, no nostalgia or mournfulness to complicate the straightforwardness of their songs. Wishy’s guitar-centric pop has nothing to mask. It’s all surface and style, cramming as much pleasure as possible in the space between every guitar chord. In lesser hands, this approach might come across as reductive. But Wishy are true masters of the form, with a preternatural instinct for hook and harmony. The band has an impeccable talent for turning convention into confection. Their second album, Nature’s Pill, doesn’t need a lot from you, but it sure sticks around in the best way.
Perhaps more than any of their genre peers, Wishy can pull a cliché the hell off. “Mona Lisa” ends in 90 seconds of pure “ooh-ooh” sing-along, only a stone’s throw away from “Semi-Charmed Life.” The call-and-response chorus of lead single “Lovesick” would sound perfectly at home on the 10 Things I Hate About You soundtrack. On “Sensational,” co-vocalists Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites monotone the lines “Journal entry / Life’s a book / Here’s a story” with a tossed-off swagger, letting a four-count drum solo fill in the blanks in their story. It’s a pure crowdpleaser moment, a lob for drummer Conner Host to spike down. That’s the secret sauce to Wishy’s slyly infectious rock: Clichés are only embarrassing if you don’t do them justice. That’s never an issue Wishy confronts.
Nature’s Pill expands on the groundwork laid by the band’s 2024 debut Triple Seven: more talk-singing on “Freak 99,” delivered with an eyeroll worthy of Kat Stratford; longer outros, which drive the hooks on “Shift” and “Headscratcher” to rom-com montage territory; more delectable call-and-response between Krauter and Pitchkites who, as vocalists, remain a match made in college-rock heaven as the latter’s warm airiness evens out the former’s bites and scoffs. Though Wishy don’t aim for the quiet emotiveness of jangle pop’s forebearers, they never lack for personality. “Could have been so real this time / But you’re not serious,” Krauter and Pitchkites sing on “You’re Not Serious.” The band continues their winning formula, using a melange of indie-pop tropes to, simply enough, rock out. Who cares if it’s not that serious? Is that so wrong when it feels this good?
