An interview with Wishy

Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites discuss being cool in high school, wanting to be twee, the art of writing ear worms, and why it's cool to make "minivan rock."

I kinda hate to admit it, but I discovered Wishy because I read a write-up about their song “Donut” that called them “shoegaze.” It’s a trigger word for me, and I find it hard to resist, much like “RIYL: Stereolab” or “mixed by Alan Moulder.” But once I heard “Donut” I understood and agreed.

More than most new bands out there, on that song particularly, Wishy actually do sound like they’ve been studying a song like “Honey Power” hard, while adding an extra-strength hook to make it their own. Wishy, however, are not shoegazers. There might be an influence that creeps into some of their music, but they view what they do as more in line with twee pop. That’s what they were aiming for. (And yes, like shoegaze, TikTok has also had its twee moment.)

Wishy are one of the only current bands from Indiana I can name off the top of my head, and before they were that, they were called Mana, and before that Mercury. The brainchild of the vastly underrated singer-songwriter Kevin Krauter - who was also a member of chillwave act Hoops, among other bands - and Nina Pitchkites of push pop, Wishy was originally a side-project for the heavier Mana. But once things got going Wishy absorbed Mana like some type of vanishing twin and developed into a full-fledged band that also includes Mitch Collins, Conner Host and Dimitri Morris.

Last year Wishy dropped the Paradise EP, featuring “Donut,” not to mention other bops like “Spinning” and “Too True,” leading the way for their debut album, the sublimely tuneful Triple Seven. At first I was expecting chill, shoegaze pop, but Krauter, Pitchkites and company have really run the ‘90s gamut with Triple Seven, integrating influences from that era ranging from Top 40, power pop, alt-rock, and - perhaps my most favourite surprise - “minivan rock” into a mixing bowl of swirling guitar splendour.

Both of you had your own solo projects going before Wishy. How did you come together for this band instead of just doing your own thing?

Nina Pitchkites: Well, Kevin had the idea for this band like maybe five or six years ago and didn't you say you wanted to start a twee pop band?

Kevin Krauter: Yeah, me and Kora, a friend who plays guitar in Narrow Head now and makes his own music as Kora Puckett, were talking about starting a band together just for fun. He was living in Bloomington at the time, as well as Nina, whereas I've lived in Indianapolis my whole life. But it never came to fruition, just because we lived in different cities, and then Nina moved to Philly for a little bit. So it was just a fun idea. We were building research playlists of the kind of music we wanted to shoot for.

Pitchkites: And then I moved back to Indy and pretty much immediately joined this band with Kevin. He asked me to play guitar and sing and I started learning all these parts. Then we just built the band from there. And the rest is history. We’ve had one lineup change but other than that we've had the same people.

Krauter: Yeah, we had one awkward situation with two potential members that ended up not working ouy, and then eventually we found a lineup and then had one switch and now we've got the final lineup and it's perfect.

Tell me about the sound you were aiming for, because Kevin’s solo project and Nina’s music as push pop were pretty different from each other.

Krauter: I think we already had decided that we both really like twee music from the ’90s. That was just kind of like a rough area where we were like, “It would be really fun to make some music like that.” At the time a lot of people were doing chill indie rock or punk music or singer-songwriter stuff. There weren't a lot of bands around filling that niche of twee, power pop, alternative rock, or shoegaze. So that was an area that we thought would be fun, to make a band in that realm because we like all that music.

So by twee are you talking about K, Slumberland, and Sarah Records?

Krauter: Yeah, stuff like that. And even bands like Heavenly and The Bats, and some American stuff too. We both really like Velocity Girl and stuff in that vein. And then more obvious names like early My Bloody Valentine, which is really twee, but in a messy and rough way. We like that sort of tenacity, with tongue-in-cheek. It's something we both really click on.

In a previous interview, Kevin, you said, “I feel like this music is the closest to what I want to make and what I feel the most excited about.” What do you think helped you reach that point where you're just so happy with the music that you're making?

Krauter: Well, having Nina in the band got me the most excited about it. I've always loved the music she's written and felt like her melodic instinct really aligned with what I was trying to achieve: a ’90s alternative rock sound, but with a sweetness to it where we’re trading off male and female vocals, having fun harmonies and that kind of vibe. I feel it’s something I've wanted to explore for the longest time, but being just me, it just didn't feel right. I couldn't achieve that until Nina and I started making music together. And we were able to vibe and click and make this sound really work.

But also over the pandemic when all my solo tours got canceled I was just at home fucking around, making music just for fun and had this idea for a band in mind. Just making louder, more fun, upbeat guitar pop. So I was just experimenting with making demos and a lot of those turned into Wishy songs or Mana songs. At the time I was seeing bands like Narrow Head and Hotline TNT who weren’t so much twee, but heavy alternative rock. Music that had some freshness to it. When I first started listening to music as a kid it was stuff like Brand New, Good Charlotte, New Found Glory and Sum 41, and that was always been in the back of my mind, this fun, loud, guitar music. Just having the outlet of this band made me realize I'm not restricted by the past music I've put out under my solo name, so I can really start fresh with Wishy and make it something new.

Nina, what was your kind of mindset coming into the band? Were you feeling a similar way?

Pitchkites: I was just happy to be asked, especially because Kevin asked me to play guitar too. That was something that I wasn't super confident about yet. I played guitar in my own band, but that was me writing my own parts. I was kind of nervous to learn new parts he had written because Kevin writes pretty complicated chord progressions. So I really put my nose to the grindstone and worked hard. But like he said, we really clicked on so much music together and over time it came pretty naturally for me to be in this band.

Krauter: But you leveled up really quickly.

Pitchkites: Thanks. I didn't really play guitar at all during the pandemic, so I was super rusty. I was sort of giving up on a music career, because I was trying to push my own solo stuff and the pandemic made me kind of jaded. But I saw the potential in this band because all of the demos he sent me were just amazing. I was just so stoked to even be a part of it. And it was always just for fun. We weren't trying to go on any world tours, but now it's going in that direction, which is really cool. I'm just happy to be here.

You both mentioned guitars. I love when a band gets excessive with their guitars, like Hotline TNT, who you mentioned that sometimes use three, even four or five guitarists live. What made you decide to up the guitar count to three in the band?

Krauter: I don't know. I think just seeing bands like that where it's not such a novelty thing. But also I was feeling like there weren’t any bands around town doing that. So it just feels like a fun flex to be like, “We have three guitarists in the band.” I think I was just in the mode of wanting to make loud, fun music to play for our friends, something that was poppy and allowed people to sing along. So it was really just thinking of the live situation and having three guitars has really helped to flesh out everything. I find that I don't have to be as focused on playing everything so perfectly. It can be a lot to handle having three guitars playing loudly in a small room or whatever. But honestly, it's a little more fun that way. We also have a lot of friends who play in punk bands, so loud music is nothing like new around here. And so it felt like we were just fitting in, and if we're going to make indie pop it should be loud.

I know Secretly Canadian is based in Bloomington, but I can't think of that many bands from Indiana other than Chisel, Marmoset and Early Day Miners, bands from the past. What’s happening in Indiana right now?

Krauter: There's plenty of stuff happening, but there isn’t a lot of music that's made a far reach outside of Indiana. It's a place where unless you know people who are already involved in the music industry outside of Indiana, it's not exactly the place where you can get picked up easily. So a lot of the music that happens around here is just whatever people want to do. There isn’t a super overarching scene. There are a handful of punk bands. Punk has definitely always been strong here. Indianapolis has had a long history of ambient, noise and experimental music, stuff like that has always had this weirdly strong line throughout all the phases of the Indianapolis music scene. And Bloomington is the college town. So that's gone through its own phases of young people starting bands, but its heyday was about five to ten years ago.

It’s hard to like pin down specifically what's going on because there would be flashes of stuff like when Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s started getting national attention. They were one of the bands from Indianapolis that played on Letterman, so there are little moments like that. But on the whole, it's just really people doing low-key projects in any kind of genre.

So you guys knew each other in high school. Nina, you were friends with Kevin's sister?

Pitchkites: Yeah, his younger sister, Katie, which makes me two years younger. She was in my grade and we had like biology together. It was really funny and cool. And I didn't even really know Kevin. We would cross paths a lot but we didn't really talk much. I mostly talked to his friend, Drew, who he was in a band with. But we started talking more while I was in college.

Krauter: I'm sure I saw you at shows in Bloomington. I think we started hanging out with the same people who went to shows in Bloomington and played music. And the contingent of people from Carmel, who lived in Bloomington. Indiana is a small place, and the network is pretty small. So everyone pretty much knows each other.

Did you guys think each other were cool in high school? Nina, did you think Kevin was?

Pitchkites: Oh, yeah. But I didn't really consider myself cool. I lived in a state of constant doubt about that fact.

Krauter: I don't know. I had my little group of burnout friends and we would just drive around smoking weed. Maybe to us that was cool. But I thought Nina was cool.

Pitchkites: His whole group of friends to me was really cool. I knew a couple of people in my grade who very much wanted to be in your friend group. We went to a huge public school.

Krauter: Our high school was massive. And so there was a small enclave of alt-kids, people who listened to good music and read Pitchfork and shit. We were all about that. There was a revolving door of people in that scene in our high school, many of whom we still hang out with today.

So Wishy is actually the third name that you guys have gone by in a fairly short time span. What forced all of the name changes?

Krauter: We were rocking the first name Mercury for a while and then found out there was another artist called Mercury on Spotify that had 50,000 or so monthly listeners. We were just starting out and there was this feeling that if we wanted to take this anywhere it could be problematic in the future. So we changed the name to Mana, which was the name I had been toying with for a long time. And then soon after we realized there was a Mexican band called Maná, and I was like, “Damn, they're world famous!” Technically it’s spelled differently and they're from a different country, so it's probably not that big of a deal. But then eventually Spotify started populating our shows onto their page and some people came to one of our shows in Indianapolis thinking that Maná was playing. They were really mad to find out that it was us instead. And then once we started Wishy it was like a separate project from Mana, so we were trying to figure out what to do. Luckily our friend Jared [Jones] who runs Winspear wanted to put out some of Wishy’s music, but we were working on Mana at the time. He said to us, “It’s hard to do two bands at once. Why not fold both projects into one?” I was really hesitant for a while because the vibes were just so different. And then eventually we talked it out and decided it was the right move, and it's been great ever since. I really am glad we did that.

Pitchkites: And it's not so different. Some of it is really heavy, some of it is really sweet. I think even the heavy stuff has a lot of pop. A lot of the heavier songs have a pretty pop, like the melodies are there.

Let’s talk about your new album, Triple Seven. Was there anything you were trying to do with it that you weren't able to achieve on the two EPs, Paradise and Mana?

Krauter: I think a lot of the songs on Triple Seven is stuff that we had prepared for a Mana album before we folded Mana into Wishy. We had a lot of Mana songs and then me and Nina went to L.A. and did the session with Ben Lomstein and Steve Marino and that became Wishy. They were back-pocket songs and new ideas, with us just experimenting, writing some soft pop and dream pop kind of stuff together. And then we were like, “Okay, the two bands are now one.” It definitely was an intentional move to make a rock album. We had the chance to go into the studio with all these songs that were going to be Mana songs, but it just became one project now. So this album is just going to be a little more rocking in our live set. Whereas with the Paradise EP, a lot of those songs we have never played live with the band. That was more of a recording project. But then a lot of the stuff on the album, like “Honey,” “Sick Sweet,” and “Little While,” those three are some of the earliest songs we made together back when we were still Mercury.

The album cover and title, I suppose, alludes to gambling. Are you both big slot machine players?

Puskites: No, that was Conor Shepherd. When we were talking about the cover we agreed that we should get Conor to do our album art and see what she comes up with. And she brought in the idea of a creating this tomato motif. It feels really pertinent to our everyday life. She bought this toy jackpot that she broke open and changed the dials to be 777. Then she made this paper mâché tomato around it with chicken wire. I helped her staple this red velvet fabric on it and she made a little stem for it. It was really just an art project that she hit out of the ballpark.

Krauter: We just ran with the tomato idea thinking it’s a good motif. There's all sorts of media and imagery when you're doing a rollout for an album, and it just felt like we got the tomato on the cover. Let's just fucking roll with it. Tomatoes are cool. But the album isn't really about tomatoes or anything. There is no super deep, underlying meaning. I do have a triple seven tattoo, like the song “Triple Seven,” which Nina came to that independently. And then around the same time I got that tattoo, I was about to get a tomato tattoo, but didn't. And then when I heard Conor's idea for the album, I was like, “Yeah, okay. Maybe that’s a sign. Let's go for it.”

Pitchkites: I need to get my tomato tattoo.

I feel the need to tell you that “Love On The Outside” is a straight-up earworm. You guys have a real gift for writing pop hooks. Is that something that comes naturally? Or is it something you have to work hard at?

Krauter: Probably both. I think it mostly comes pretty naturally. Or we work hard so that it comes naturally. I think we've both put in the time of making songs on our own. Both Nina and I have really strong pop sensibilities when we write music, so there is that practice of writing songs over the years, you load up a repertoire or an arsenal of moves to make when you're crafting a song. You've sort of prepared your puzzle pieces for finding which one's going to fit and how to change it to make it fresh for the song. But I think we're both just pop heads at the core.

Are you, are you both big fans of commercial pop music?

Krauter: I mean, yeah, I love Charlie XCX. A hook is a hook, you know.

Pitchkites: And I like vibing to Sabrina Carpenter's recent singles.

Would you say Wishy is brat?

Krauter: Sort of off the record, probably.

I'm going to put that on the record.

Krauter: Sure. If you must.

Pitchkites: We both saw Charli XCX when she came to Indianapolis a couple of summers ago. And everyone got sick so people started calling it COVID XCX.

I guess like Charli XCX, what I really like about Triple Seven is that it isn't just focused on sounding like one thing, like we discussed. For instance, “Sick Sweet” is very power pop, “Just Like Sunday” has the feel of a throwback to commercial ’90s pop, “Game” and “Little While” sound influenced by shoegaze, and I think because of its huge melodies, “Love On The Outside” makes me think of minivan rock, you know, that late ’90s, early ’00s pop-rock that was ruling the charts in America? Stuff like New Radicals, Lifehouse, Semisonic and Third Eye Blind.

Pitchkites: Oh yeah. That Lifehouse song is so good!

Krauter: I think that's kind of our bread and butter. With this band, I think by opening up the vibe having both rock songs and pop song really allowed us to do whatever we want. Nina and I both like have different vibes that we like to inhabit when we're writing stuff. And it's fun to just have that freedom to exist as a band in service to the song rather than to a genre, you know? It just depends on the song we're making, whatever vibe we want to go to. And that “minivan rock” vibe is something that comes really naturally to us. It's fun to have that freedom.

I think some people might be embarrassed to admit they like minivan rock, but man, the majority of that stuff is undeniably catchy and fun to listen to. And everybody knows those songs.

Krauter: “Love On The Outside” in particular, the melody on the verse, when I came up with that in my head I was like, “Damn, that's some All-American Rejects shit!”

Yeah, they were definitely a minivan rock band!

Krauter: I loved that band back in the day. And in the past I feel like I would have been like, “That’s not cool.” But I think me and Nina's personalities just really like enable each other to be like, “Fuck it, this is fun.” So who cares about whether or not it's cool or not, we can make it cool in a way that it's fun to be cheeky and indulge in that side of things.