The Dreamy Ascension of Wisp
Natalie Lu was a first-year computer science major in San Francisco when one of her songs blew up on TikTok. Now, she's making music full-time, winning over new fans with her heavy, distorted take on modern shoegaze.
- Written by: Jane Hu
- Photos: Bradley J. Calder
Despite its roots in the alternative post-punk scene of 1980s United Kingdom, shoegaze is currently finding new life in an emerging generation of American artists who look, and often sound, different from its originators. Call it “shoegaze 3.0,” “Nu-gaze,” or even “Gen-Z shoegaze,” this next wave of the genre is often heavier, grungier, and, if anything, even more distorted than that of its predecessors. This distortion might even push it past the point of recognition for purists, as modern shoegaze draws as much from Deftones and Duster as from the Cocteau Twins. Often, artists are being discovered on mainstream platforms like Tiktok rather than through underground scenes.
Such has been the case of 20-year-old San Francisco native Natalie Lu, better known as Wisp, who’s been making her mark on the shoegaze scene, even as she demurs from claiming too much expertise or investment over the current state of the genre. This makes a kind of sense, given Wisp’s swift and rather serendipitous ascent—rising to fame when her single “Your Face” went viral on TikTok last year, literally overnight. (The track currently has 110 million Spotify streams.) At the time, Lu was a first-year computer science major at SF State with no ambitions of a music career. Not long after the release of “Your Face,” she signed a record deal with Interscope (Music Soup) and relocated to Los Angeles to focus on her music in earnest.
Her debut album If Not Winter—its title drawn appropriately from Sappho—came out earlier this month. Lu’s most ambitious and defined project to date, the album has already earned her both critical praise and a legion of new fans. We meet on an unseasonably gloomy July afternoon in Los Angeles. In person, Lu is mellow and unassuming. She speaks in muted—yet enigmatic—cadences that one could describe as, well, wispy. She’s wearing a simple white baby T-shirt and black pants that look like they might be made out of tracksuit material, and a yellow Starface pimple patch.
She had suggested lunch at All Time, a Los Feliz institution that boasts a high chance of a local celebrity sighting—a fact that seems only to increase the restaurant’s ambience of relative anonymity. (When I ask Lu if this was a particular favorite spot of hers, she confesses that while she likes it, she only ever comes for work appointments.) I immediately spot the comedian Zack Woods sitting directly behind my interlocutor. When I point this out to her later, she doesn’t recognize him, which is fair enough. One of the perks of Los Angeles is its ranging eclecticism—geographically, culturally, and creatively. The environment seems to suit Wisp, who, for all her indebtedness to shoegaze, is ultimately more interested in doing her own thing, irrespective of how the music gets labelled.
Jane Hu
Wisp
Let’s begin by talking about your origin story. I think you were in your first year as a computer science major at SF State when “Your Face” went viral on TikTok, which led to your signing with Interscope. Was going all in on music a hard decision for you?
I grew up doing music, so it’s kind of been part of my life, but not necessarily in a scene way. I feel like I wasn’t really involved in the music scene back in San Francisco, so being able to make music in college and then getting the chance to move to LA and work with different producers and find a home here in music was really helpful. When I was getting hit up in college while majoring in computer science, it was definitely very daunting and I was taking a lot of these interviews on my own. But once I met my manager, we ultimately decided to sign with Interscope. I feel like they let my creativity flow and I’m able to express myself. I tried doing a semester and doing music at the same time, but I felt like I wanted to give my full attention to music, and my parents were really supportive of me dropping out too.
Tell me about the move from the Bay to LA. Like, I imagine some of it was like necessary creatively, but how has that culture shift been for you?
Moving out of SF was kind of a back-and-forth decision, just because I’m really frugal with money and I did not want to start paying rent like an actual adult. And I also chose to go to college in SF because I wanted to stay near my parents. So I think the hardest thing for me was just moving away from home. But I knew that it was almost kind of necessary because if I wanted to, you know, fully immerse myself in music, I had to be doing it every day. And yeah, the culture here is definitely very different from the Bay. I feel like no offense to LA Natives because I think they’re super sweet, but I think that the people that move to LA feel a lot less genuine than the people in the Bay Area. So it was definitely difficult for me to make friends here and find connections outside of music. But in a sense, I feel like I have kind of changed, as much as I hate to admit it. I think that the LA culture kind of just gets to you sometimes, and I find myself like doing things that I never would’ve done if I lived back in SF still, like going to fucking Erewhon. You know, like just doing like stupid stuff like that. [laughs]
How would you describe your style—do you have any favorite designers? Has it changed since moving to LA?
I feel like it took me a while to find my personal style, but it wasn’t necessarily moving to LA that helped me. I just think that I was consuming a lot more like fashion media and watching more runway shows and like being more immersed in the fashion world and industry that helped me find my own style. Nowadays I love artisanal designers. I like wearing things that make me feel elegant, but also, like, kind of have an edge to them. I love Marc Le Bihan—he’s French and one of my favorite designers in the world. He just makes very asymmetrical flowy dresses and skirts and tops. I think it’s so gothic and sick.
Yeah, it’s like kind of Victorian.
It's so beautiful. Elena Dawson is amazing as well, and Ann Demeulemeester. Stuff like that makes me feel very confident. So I try to dress like that on stage because that's when I feel the best and then I can perform well because I feel confident.
Do you see a relationship between your majoring in computer science and your music?
Definitely not. I feel like computer science was something I was subconsciously forcing myself to do, just because I went into college thinking that I had to find a job and I had to major in something that would make me money in the future. But now I think computer science is like the fifth or sixth major that’s ranked the highest for unemployment.
There’s also such an influx, especially in the Bay Area, and the tech is changing so quickly too.
Yeah. I feel like it’s such an oversaturated career. So I’m kind of glad that, you know, this played out really well and I’m able to do something that I’m passionate about and make money from it.
I’m interested in your growing up in the Bay Area, where I lived for a long time, and how that might’ve influenced your music. You were saying that there wasn’t a huge scene there, so it doesn’t sound like you were necessarily meeting people there…
Growing up, I cared a lot about my academics, so most of the time I was just focused on getting good grades and performing well on tests. But I did join a band when I was in high school, and that was such a fun experience. I was able to do that through my school’s Modern Band program. Basically you just learn how to play the drums. You learn how to play keyboard, bass, and electric guitar, and at the end of the year, you form a band with your classmates and you perform at the school’s festival. I grew up in Outer Sunset, near Ocean Beach, really close to the water. And obviously Ocean Beach is not like a beach where it’s sunny and you can relax. It’s very foggy and gloomy, and I feel like all of my walks in the morning and after school really helped create this scene in my head of what I wanted my music to sound like. I was actively listening to shoegaze while walking on the beach, where all this fog, this whole landscape, just really did something for my soundscape of my music. Water is a big component for my music.
Do you go to the beach here too?
Honestly, my least favorite part of LA is how you have to, you know, drive 40 minutes to get to a beach. And the beaches honestly are not even that good. I feel like I’ve been really spoiled growing up because I used to go surfing with my dad, so we would go to Pacifica, Linda Mar, Capitola, and a lot of my birthday trips we would go to Santa Cruz as well. All those beaches are just amazing. I just don’t think LA beaches compare to NorCal Beaches, in my opinion.
Could you say more about your relationship to shoegaze as a genre—what was your cultural entry point?
I was really into pop music when I was in elementary school, and then in middle school I loved alternative artists like Twenty One Pilots and Melanie Martinez. And then when I was about 13 or 14, I started getting into a lot of older bands, like Black Sabbath; Oasis was a really big one for me. Growing up, my dad’s favorite band was Gorillaz. So every single road trip, the only artist he would play was Gorillaz. And there's this one specific song, “On Melancholy Hill,” and I remember just loving it and putting it on repeat in the car. That song had a lot of dream quality elements. So when I was creating playlists around “On Melancholy Hill,” that's when I discovered Beach House and Cocteau Twins, and throughout high school, I was just discovering shoegaze music without knowing the term. So I was listening to bands like Nothing. Back then, these were just songs that I enjoyed. I just, like, labeled everything as “indie” or “music that I liked.”
Your dad liking Gorillaz is really surprising, and sweet.
He just like loves them so much. [laughs] It’s just always been his thing.
And he’s like, I will not listen to anything else in the car. [laughs] My dad really likes Aqua.
Those are both very dad bands. Maybe there’s some chip in their brains and it makes them all the same.
Classic dad bands. It’s funny because historically, shoegaze is kind of like a dad band, right? Though it’s also really evolved, and there’s such an ongoing debate around the genre. The Cocteau Twins are very dreamy and gentle, whereas I sense your music is a bit grungier and more electronic. How did you get into listening to and eventually making music that’s so sonically heavy?
I feel like when I listen to music and I’m hearing like Beach House or Cocteau Twins compared to My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive, they all share similar characteristics that make them shoegaze, but they also have their own unique thing going on which differentiates them from and makes them special. So I feel like with my music, there are fuzzy guitars and heavy guitars, but I think that maybe my vocal style or the synths that I add to my music make it different. I think that I’ve definitely strayed from using the term “shoegaze” just because I don’t want to change the definition of shoegaze. I will always love the genre and, you know, stand behind it. I just feel like nowadays I would rather create music with no label attached.
How would you describe that quality shared by most shoegaze bands?
I think that comes from the grit and heaviness. And obviously this can come in all forms of instrumentation. What makes shoegaze really unique compared to other more emotional genres is it feels so raw—it’s building color and a world around you. And when I listen to shoegaze personally, I feel very transported to a different dimension. It feels very dreamy and just like drowning.
Shoegaze emerged from Scotland and Ireland during the 1980s—so it’s largely white, largely male-coded. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why or how so many of the big stars emerging out of the genre these days are, for lack of better words, not white—and many of them are frankly young cool Asians.
I feel like when people get used to something, they connect an image to the thing they’re thinking about. So seeing all these pioneers be predominantly white men kind of predetermines what shoegaze bands should look like, and what makes a shoegaze band kind of good in a sense. Having this image that you’re one of the originals and you look like the people that you know, started shoegaze, it’ll make people think like, okay, you’re legit and you’re, you know, making good music because you look a certain way. And so when they see something out of the ordinary, for example, like a young female making shoegaze or someone with a more alternative style, and she’s not just a guy wearing like a cap and a T-shirt and some jeans, you know, then they’re like, whoa, like, this is not real music. I think we see this a lot in bands like Glixen and myself, where these female-fronted bands have a specific image to us, almost threatens a lot of people that have been so purist about the community and genre. And I think that not just as shoegaze, but everyone should be more open-minded to the people that can make music.
Have you or how do you pick up on that sense of threat?
You know it, you can always feel it. I feel like it’s always in the back of someone’s head. And obviously, like I never want to make things bigger than they are. I don’t want to make, you know, my hate about race or about my gender, because I know that most of the hate that I receive from people is solely because they just aren’t a fan of my music. And that’s totally okay!I think that Glixen is an incredible band and they’re so sick, they make incredible music, but I have seen them receive similar comments that I receive. And I think that’s just because, you know, people are not used to seeing cool girls rock out. [laughs] Yeah. That’s literally it. Like, um, I mean, I wouldn’t go as far to call it like jealousy, but I think that, you know, you should just let people shine. Girls are making rock music, it’s super sick, and we come from an appreciation of the shoegaze genre.When I’m on stage, it doesn’t really matter what genre I’m performing, I’m just gonna feel the same. Like, I’m gonna be myself. I feel like sometimes I get a little bit timid on stage, but that’s just how I naturally am.
If Not Winter is technically your debut album, but I feel like you’re doing have such a distinct and developed sound out in the world. How are you feeling, if anything, about releasing an album, especially after your sort of like, initial success with like, the single shorter formats, the EP?
It’s totally different. I like that an album is vastly different from creating EPs or putting out singles because so much more thought goes behind it. And you have to write out almost like a narrative or story. I didn’t want to just compile some of my favorite songs into the album and say, okay, here’s like my debut album. So I’ve been working on it for over a year now and finding what I wanted it to be about definitely took time.
How would you describe the narrative of If Not Winter?
I think that the narrative really just follows the way I felt while creating the album. It isn’t in the order of, you know, each song that I make, but I think that it still showcases, you know, the indulgences I had in making music and the people that I met, the relationships that I’ve been through, my self-doubt, my self-pity and insecurities that kind of came out and almost had to come out and become music because I felt all these things so strongly to make songs about them. So being vulnerable and putting my heart on my sleeve, I think pushed me to make the best art that I’ve made so far.
Jane Hu is a writer and English professor based in Los Angeles. She has written for The New Yorker, Bookforum, N+1, and more
- Written by: Jane Hu
- Photos: Bradley J. Calder
- Date: August 13, 2025
