Meet “Your Favorite Band You’ve Never Heard of” Bedroom Rock band, wilt
Self-proclaimed bedroom rock band, Wilt is making waves with their vibrant personalities and grunge rock meets lo-fi sound. The band is composed of your new favorite LA twenty-somethings: Chelsea Rifkin (lead vocals), Aaron Liebman (producer & guitarist), Andrew Perrea (producer & guitarist), Daniel Bermudez (drummer) and Jake Shpiner (bassist).
The name Wilt stems from lead vocalist Chelsea Rifkin’s love for classic rock band Hole and the song “Celebrity Skin.” The lyrics “Wilted and faded / Somewhere in Hollywood” struck Rifkin and inspired her pursuit for a band. Forming through happenstance and producer Aaron Liebman vast network of Los Angeles musicians the band has quickly formed a familial dynamic bounding off of one another seamlessly, seemingly “chemically locked” in through their music.
The five-person collective just released their latest single “moved along” via Echo Records. “moved along” is a vampy, gritty and dreamy track for every carefree spirit in need of an anthem this summer. The band was ecstatic about this latest release as they shared “it stands out from the rest of our catalog because of the lofi, garagey feel” creating a fresh soundscape for Wilt. Detailing tumultuous heartache and the need to be a free spirit Wilt marries grunge sounds and contemplative lyrics, exploring love in early adulthood.
The energetic and dynamic band sat down with Unpublished to discuss details in production, TikTok, and live performances.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you tell us who wilt is?
[AARON]: We've decided that we're the opposite of bedroom pop. Even though our last release was lo-fi sounding. But we're an alternative rock band that's loud and we play grunge-inspired rock music
[CHELSEA]: Bedroom rock, as we've been calling it because we still produce everything and-
[AARON]: We're in my garage right now.
[CHELSEA]: And we usually use Andrew’s bedroom, too.
[UNPUBLISHED]: The title bedroom rock is super unique. How did you formulate that?
[AARON]: Andrew coined that!
[ANDREW]: Yeah I coined that. We'd been saying grunge-inspired for a while, but I don't think that quite sums it up. And there are obviously other influences there. We've had five years or so of people doing stuff in their bedrooms and this lo-fi, pop, indie sound that's been really dominant. And we're pushing back on that. Still doing things in our bedroom, but making it louder.
[UNPUBLISHED]: That rocks! How did you all come together?
[AARON]: Yeah, that's my cue. So I was producing with Chelsea doing pop music. [...] We were figuring it out and trying to find a sound and we did some acoustic stuff, some pop stuff, and EDM stuff. [...] She had such a good voice and I was like, ‘Okay, there's definitely some potential here to make some great music’ and we were just trying to figure out the lane. And then she was like, ‘I want to be in a band.’ And I was like, ‘let's try it.’ So I hit up Dan, the drummer who's my session drummer, my go-to. Then had to rope Andrew. [...] It was tough because doing a band in your free time, that's a lot to ask because you have to meet up and practice and basically not get paid at all, right? But we got it together for this one house party in Newbury Park at Dan's old place. And Dan went crazy and miked up everything. And I got the stems back and I put them in logic, and I listened to it and I was like, ‘Holy shit! This sounds great.’ I was blown away. We realized we were onto something. [...] We started making a Tik Toks every single until something cool happens. Lo and behold, Chelsea filmed our first Tik Tok and it got 3 million views. [...] We thought it was a fluke and then we made a couple more viral videos, all of a sudden, 25k followers, 50k and now all of a sudden we're at 100,000 followers.
[UNPUBLISHED]: That's an insane statistic to jump off with. Was it something you were expecting?
[AARON & CHELSEA]: No! Not at all.
[CHELSEA]: Not that fast. [...] We got 50,000 followers in the span of two weeks, which was a little bit scary. [...] It’s still super cool but we're used to it now. We're like we can make a viral video.
[UNPUBLISHED]: When Aaron brought you guys all together, are there any standout memories from the first time that you got together and realized ‘this is wilt’?
[CHELSEA]: Oh yes! The first day I met Andrew he and Aaron took shrooms before I got there. *laughs* We had this other bass player named Sean, Jake joined us a little more recently. And Sean and I had written this song called “puberty” and I brought it to Aaron. And we were fucking around with it. And I'm like, ‘I really want there to be a loud party at the end.’ And all of a sudden, Andrew just pulls out this Foo Fighters-y riff. And I'm like, ‘Okay. Yeah, absolutely.’ And that was our first official rehearsal.
[AARON]: Another moment was [...] we had a band practice and we all felt like we were in high school again. And we were all like ‘that was so much fun!’ We played Nirvana and we were just filming videos, it was like a sleepover or something.
[ANDREW]: It was a pretty amazing feeling, like Aaron mentioned, after the first viral video, [...] we just couldn't stop laughing. [...] we were really being ourselves and letting that shine. And I think that really sealed the deal. I've been a part of so many music projects and there's always so much talent and so much passion involved. But we released this so quickly and there was a large audience really relating to us. Finding out that we could do that consistently and not just accidentally was super formative.
[UNPUBLISHED]: That's super awesome! I read that your name stems from a Hole lyric. Were there any alternate band names that you can remember?
[CHELSEA]: I don’t know if I like it or hate it but once we're, hopefully, really famous [...] we can do one of those random side projects that we won't announce. But the random band name is Gwen and The Rips *laughs* We're all pretty stoner-y so bong rips. It would have been Chelsea and The Rips but my last name is Rifkin, so that’s a little cringe to me. But Gwen is the character of Wilt, kinda like a mascot.
[ANDREW]: That one came up in March but Wilt came up in the same conversation. And I instantly felt like that one was it. It’s got a lot of imagery, feeling, and emotion to it right away. And so, thankfully, we didn't have to go too crazy. Coming up with a bunch of different names for it.
[CHELSEA]: Yeah, it just felt right.
[AARON]: We were gonna go with Nirvana two but that felt a little ballsy. *band laughs*
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you elaborate more on the concept of ‘Gwen’ as a mascot?
[CHELSEA]: “gwen” was the first song we had written on guitar. I’d only begun to play guitar so I just copied Hole chords. They were the only ones I knew how to play. It was a very formative song of ours. I don't necessarily think the character of Gwen is Wilt but it is our most popular song. And the character Gwen is relatable for everyone. She’s a girl who really just can't get her shit together. And I think that's very reminiscent of Wilt because we're a rock band.
[ANDREW]: Each album cover does not necessarily have the character Gwen on it, but the way that Chelsea shoots each album art is that each model is an embodiment of that song.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Speaking of album covers, Chelsea you shoot them all and it’s very 2016 grunge-core! You also recently put out merch. How has the process been marrying those visual elements with the sound?
[CHELSEA]: I shot all the covers except for “puberty.” With “gwen” inspiration struck pretty hard. I knew exactly what I wanted. I had a couple of shots already set up. “nothing special” was a little different. I had less of a clear vision for it. “nothing special” to me is like you're in a relationship you don't really care about and you're just having fun and doing whatever the fuck you want, it's nothing special. So for that album cover [...] we put a projector on my friend Kiki and just had her dance around. Which is maybe less characteristic than “gwen” but I think that definitely captures the vibe of the song. [...] For “moved along,” our latest release, that's Aaron's girlfriend on the cover. [...] we just have her in my backyard twirling around a whole fuck ton because “moved along” is another one of those songs [with a] similar sentiment to “nothing special.” That ‘I don't even care anymore’ vibe. My favorite lyric is “I'm thrown by the things that I feel when I'm alone.” That's hella depressing but also freeing. We had her dancing around which is emblematic of the cover and the greenery. It’s a very Summer-y, Spring song.
[UNPUBLISHED]: 1,000%! You guys recently performed for Luna Collective and School Night. How were those first performances?
[JAKE]: That was my first time playing for wilt live. I think that was really when we kind of meshed and our personalities melted down. We were just this unit. We were there and in it. For me personally, it was a huge ‘I'm really in love with this idea and this group of people’ moment. We can just communicate really well on stage and I've never played with a group of people one or two times and been that chemically locked.
[AARON]: It’s funny ‘cause when you're on stage you kind of blank and then the sets over. I think most musicians can relate to this, but it's so hard to remember how I felt when I was up there because I just blacked out which is why it’s great to have the videos. Jake did some pretty cool bass fills. [...] What's so cool about [the video] is that it’s just camera audio from an iPhone. There's nothing crazy happening there, it's just us. It was also really reaffirming looking back at that footage [because] we sound really good!
[ChELSEA]: Also at School Night there were a couple of people who had been there a bunch of times before and were like ‘we've never seen it this packed.’ So it's also really cool to see [...] We even had people singing along, especially at the Luna Collective show recently. There have been these two girls, I forget their names, but they've been to every single one of our shows so far. They know all the lyrics! They wear their wilt shirts every time and that is just the craziest thing to me
[ANDREW]: I’d add on to that and say the most special moments have been most special moments have been interactions with fans. School Night was our first real gig and seeing the room so packed after living out this band thing between ourselves and mainly [online]. But seeing people show up gives you a sense of the impact of what you’re doing. People came as far as Fresno, a guy drove down to see us at the Luna Collective show.
[DANIEL]: I think the shows have just been super validating for all of us. Like Andrew said there’s so much time on our phone [...] but actually getting there and seeing people respond to the music in person, being on the stage and seeing how people interpret the things that we work so hard on is so surreal.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You guys just released your latest single “moved along.” It's a stellar track. What is the story behind the song?
[CHELSEA]: I wrote this at the same time as “gwen,” before wilt was a thing. [...] It was the second song I'd ever written on guitar, I still only knew a few Hole chords but we pitched it down, so you can't really tell anymore. But the story there is that I was dating this guy. Every time he'd come over, he would tell me another about another one of his exes that was crazy. And, at some point, I was like ‘Hmm, I feel like you might be the problem, though.’ It was a very toxic relationship, it made me very depressed. But it was also very freeing because it taught me a lot about relationships. [...] It was my first true devastating heartbreak. And I think it channels into the song in a fun, dancey, happy way. When I have sad emotions, I joke, I'm one of those people. So I think that's kind of where that came from.
[UNPUBLISHED]: It's a super lively song. What was the production and instrumentation process like?
[ANDREW]: We worked on that song the second time I ever met Chelsea, with our old bass player, Sean. I remember Chelsea had the chords and this was before Wilt. I remember hearing the “I am thrown” part and thinking it was just this drone on this one chord, but thinking ‘what if afterwards, we did this big thing where we change the chords’. And then that ended up being the thing you hear in the final song where it goes into this more power rock vibe [...] and Chelsea's vocals washed over it. And that was the earliest thing we worked on together.
[AARON]: That was pretty nuts. I was demoing it out with Chelsea and I couldn't escape this feeling of ‘why does it sound so corny?’ [...] It just sounded way too Disney Channel. And then I remembered, Andrew had actually given me advice about this. I'd seen him pitch a sound up or down, depending where you want it to just put it on the master. [...] So I pitched the song down by one and a half, and then all of a sudden, it just lit up. It has this cool lo-fi, worn out, old, dusty, texture. It really clicked right then. What's going to be annoying for people is that if they try to play along through it, they're gonna have a bad time
[JAKE]: I have a bad time playing along to it. *laughs*
[UNPUBLISHED]: You guys really seem to bounce off one another. How has it been cultivating that within practices?
[ChELSEA]: It comes pretty naturally. We also recently did a band retreat to Joshua Tree and it was raining the entire time so we were just trapped indoors which really got us close. We all know each other pretty well. I would say we're all the best of friends. It's really great to make music with your friends. It would suck if we hated each other.
[AARON]: It was raining the whole time. So we reverted to middle school sleepover [behavior]. Because there's nothing to do. We're literally running around the air bnb. Chelsea and Andrew ran toward each other with pillows in between them. But I love this idea of band lore and inside jokes.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You guys mentioned expanding your discography, what is it like working on a single versus a cohesive piece of work like an EP?
[AARON]: Each song has been different. It's so easy to do everything on your computer now, right? And sometimes what's easiest isn't necessarily the right thing to do. [...] We record each drum on the drum kit so we get a nice drum sound. And that's something we can't really get on a computer. I mean, there's ways to do it but we get drums first and foremost, that's the foundation and then we're gonna build up from there. It's always best to have a demo that's basically finished. What's really cool about Andrew’s demos, as opposed to mine, is that Andrew's demos sound like they're finished in their own special little bedroom lo-fi way. [...] Drums, guitar tones, Chelsea's vocals and then Andrew and I will bang our heads against the wall for two weeks until it's been mixed mastered.
[ANDREW]: Speaking of the difference between singles and making a larger body of work we're still figuring that out right now. Because we have experience with other artists, but Wilt is still a new project and this is our first time doing multiple songs. We're still figuring out things like, ‘Oh, should we use the same snare between each song’ or ‘how different can we make it while it still feels the same?’ Something that we take for granted is that Chelsea's incredible voice is the focus of each track. The average listener doesn't care about the things that Aaron and I obsess over. But I think we also have a good amount of fans that are very, very passionate musicians, or music fans that do appreciate the finer details of the production that we work hard on.Speaking about Aaron and I’s demos [...] I don't ever think of anything as a demo. I'm just starting on the song and I'm not gonna finish a concept and then remake it later. That is the concept that I make.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You were just talking about how your listeners are musicians too! Are there any niche things that you guys have done that someone has noticed?
[AARON]: Oh, that's a great question. I do remember this one dude. When we dropped puberty he was like, ‘I saw that you dropped it and I waited till I got home. I'm on my 10th listen right now.’ And then he basically gave a dissertation on how it was a really sick song. And the whole crazy part of that song is the ending because it's super loud and goes from acoustic to full band at a drop basically. And this guy was like, ‘the ebb and flow between the soft verses are even more satisfying than the drop’ and I never have thought that. And then at the end of “nothing special” Chelsea goes “Like a broken record playing” and we put in the sound of record static. That was fun because it is like a broken record. I was like, ‘no one's gonna notice that maybe they'll feel it’ and then some band DM’d us like ‘what's that sound? At the end of nothing special. It sounds like record static.’ I was like, ‘That's so sick.’ They must have listened to that at least 10 times to hear that.
[CHELSEA]: One of my favorite things that happened. There's this band that started and listed us as one of the inspirations that got them started along with Nirvana.
[ANDREW]: Yeah, somebody dm’s us from Houston, Texas, and they're like, ‘we started a band and our favorite bands are Nirvana, Radiohead, and wilt.’ That's such a crazy list!
[UNPUBLISHED]: What's up next for wilt?
[CHELSEA]: EP! Touring! We get DM’s all the time like ‘can you come to this place?’ very soon. It’s starting to head in that direction. [...] Everything that we do is really just so that we can play live and tour. The recorded stuff, all the Tik Toks, it’s just so we can get on stage. Whenever we play that really big theater, I'm going to stand there and think ‘we did this because we made stupid memes.’ But what's next? An EP for sure! We're due for a body of work and we have so many songs that we can't wait to share. I'm looking forward to dropping something that people can just listen to, that's more than one song.
