Wisp

The Sunset District, April 2023

Natalie R. Lu was born in San Francisco on 6 August 2004 and grew up in the city's Sunset District. She was studying computer science at San Francisco State University — a degree she never finished — when she began writing songs in April 2023, with no production experience at all. The first one that counted was made the cheapest way available: Lu sang over an instrumental by the producer Grayskies, monitoring through a pair of Apple earbuds.

'Your Face' came out on 4 April 2023, three minutes 47 of metallic guitar with the voice set well back in the mix. Lu pushed it on TikTok in carousel posts, a tactic she had seen Los Angeles bands using, and it moved: a peak of No. 7 on Billboard's Hot Hard Rock Songs chart in March 2024, more than 80 million Spotify streams by November 2024, a gold certification from Pro-Música Brasil in 2025, and past 200 million streams by 2026. The underwater video, directed by Boni Mata with the credits deliberately smudged, premiered on 21 November 2023. Lu's own account of writing the song is flat — it was, she has said, honestly just for fun. The Interscope deal followed the virality rather than preceding it, and her releases now carry both Music Soup and Interscope.

Pandora, and learning the job in public

The debut EP Pandora arrived on 5 April 2024: six tracks, 23 minutes 36, recorded across 2023 and 2024 between a room credited as Natalie's Room and sessions in Los Angeles, with Photographic Memory, Kraus, Grayskies and Elliott Kozel producing. Two singles set it up, 'See You Soon' in January 2024 and 'Enough for You' in March. Reviewers put it inside the lineage it drew on — Hum, Deftones, the Cocteau Twins — and divided over whether that was devotion or copying; Pitchfork scored it 6.4, Spectrum Culture 55 per cent. Consequence had already labelled her the next leader of the shoegaze revival in March 2024, which set an expectation she then had to tour into.

The touring started immediately: a US run through April and May 2024, Photographic Memory supporting some dates, plus opening slots with the British band Panchiko. Lu's stated reference points explain the odd shape of her career since — Whirr, Ovlov, Title Fight, the Cocteau Twins and Nothing sitting next to My Chemical Romance and Deftones. That second half is how a shoegaze act from San Francisco ended up opening for System of a Down.

If Not Winter and a split verdict

If Not Winter, the debut album, was released on 1 August 2025 through Music Soup and Interscope: 12 tracks, 38 minutes 13, built over roughly 18 months of Los Angeles sessions with Aldn, Colin Brittain, Kraus, Stint and Photographic Memory. Five singles ran ahead of it — 'Sword' on 14 March 2025, 'Get Back to Me' on 18 April, 'Save Me Now' on 6 June, 'Breathe Onto Me' on 18 July and 'Serpentine' on 29 July.

The record widened the palette rather than tidying it, pulling pop, electronic and dream-pop elements through the distortion. 'Guide light' runs My Bloody Valentine-style guitar bends until it slows and dissolves into an ambient birdsong interlude called 'Latvia'; the title track is an emo ballad that finishes on solo piano; 'Mesmerized' and 'Breathe Onto Me' lead with power chords and drums. Lu's method is melody first, lyrics and atmosphere afterwards, which is audible in how clean the top line stays however loud the guitars get.

Metacritic settled at 75. AllMusic gave four stars and credited her with helping define how shoegaze sounds in the 2020s, Clash 8/10, Paste 7.3; NME called it a triumphant debut and 'the sound of a young artist who's still growing into herself' while noting that the songs blur into one another over a full sitting. Pitchfork was the outlier at 5.8, unconvinced by a vocal that stays between a coo and a stage whisper. Sales were modest against the streaming figures: No. 37 on Billboard's Top Current Album Sales chart.

2026: Laneway, the festival circuit, and a half-written second record

The If Not Winter touring cycle took her to Australia and New Zealand in February 2026 — Laneway Festival in Auckland on the 5th, the Gold Coast on the 7th, Sydney on the 8th and Melbourne on the 13th — with Handsome Tours adding two headline sideshows, Liberty Hall in Sydney on 12 February and the Croxton Bandroom in Melbourne on 14 February.

Summer was festivals: Governors Ball, Lollapalooza, Red Rocks Amphitheatre on 7 August supporting beabadoobee, Summer Sonic in Tokyo on 14 August, All Points East in London's Victoria Park on 23 August and Leeds Festival on 28 August. The only new recording to surface in 2026 has been a feature — the Gloom Version of 'Rapture' with Touché Amoré, cut for the tenth-anniversary edition of Stage Four.

The next album is written but not finished. Speaking to The Fader on 28 July 2026, Lu said she had been writing for three or four months and had five demos she was excited about, with the aim of completing the record by late 2026, and described the direction as more hopeful and bright — 'I'm not stuck writing sad music anymore.' In a 2026 interview with Polyester she sketched it as iridescent silver against the forest green of the debut: shoegaze tones with emo-leaning riffs and melodies that tip towards pop-punk, drawing on the Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco and Gorillaz records she grew up with, and written without fixed structure — an approach she calls anti-rules. An unreleased song, 'Butterflies', is already finished.

The set as it stands

Since 1 October 2026 the job has been opening arenas. Wisp is supporting every US, Canadian and UK date of beabadoobee's Powerlines Tour, which began at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, played Madison Square Garden on 5 October and the Lenovo Center in Raleigh on 11 October, closes its North American leg at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on 29 October, then runs through the UK and Europe from 14 November to 7 December, including the AO Arena in Manchester on 17 November. Songkick listed 19 upcoming dates at the start of October.

The set has tightened to match the slot. The opening nights at Mohegan Sun on 1 October and TD Garden in Boston on 2 October ran the same ten songs in the same order, closing on 'Your Face' — comfortably her most-played song — and finding room for the unreleased 'Butterflies' in the middle. Festival sets over the summer were eight songs, opening with 'Pandora'. Lu has been explicit about wanting the new material to work in that format with no scaffolding: drums, bass, two guitars and a voice, carrying the weight without extra production. Her own read on where she is: she feels confident on stage now, and the memory she keeps returning to from Red Rocks in August is the crowd's phone torches going up, which she compared to being in space.