Wisp

Her alias may conjure the featherweight sonics of the ‘90s dream pop and shoegaze that influenced her, but Wisp’s songs land with the force of falling anvils. Born Natalie Lu in 2004, the San Francisco native honed her intimate singing style by working through her feelings on acoustic guitar. But her early bedroom experiments quickly spread worldwide: Sung over a backing track by alt-rock beatmaker GRAYSKIES, her 2023 single “Your face” went viral, racking up millions of streams and securing her a deal with Interscope. Her subsequent songs perfectly encapsulate shoegaze’s delicious contradictions, balancing her yearning, sighing vocals with heavyweight guitars and drums carrying the faintest whiff of nu-metal. It’s a fiercely interior sound, but she’s no wallflower, she tells Apple Music. “The environment in which I write my songs is super important,” she says of the creative scene in her adopted hometown of Los Angeles. “I feel so much more inspired when I’m working with others.”