You could call Wishy’s story a lucky one. Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternative music’s semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge and power-pop swirling together. On their debut album “Triple Seven”, Indiana songwriters Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites’ musical synergy proves itself to be a rare one–the kind that sounds like someone striking gold. Wishy’s penchant for indelible hooks is couched equally in pillowy atmospherics and scathing distortion. By day Krauter works as a music teacher, giving drum and guitar lessons to students, while Pitchkites is a talented seamstress by trade and often makes embroidered merch for the band.
At 10 tracks and 41 minutes long, “Triple Seven” solidifies Wishy’s sound and proves that the band—formed in 2021 by long time friends Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites has the chops to sustain its standard of quality across a full-length release. But for rock fans burned by promising bands’ patchy releases in the past, it’s nice to hear. Krauter and Pitchkites trade off lead vocals the former’s come from a more nasally pinched pop-punk tradition, while the latter’s are calm and cool, often carrying melodies that float above it all. (Pitchkites sounds like she was born to sing in a dream pop band.)
Throughout the album, they play off each other perfectly, whether they’re providing tonal tension (see the back-to-back zigzag of the strutting “Busted” into the luscious “Just Like Sunday”) or intertwining seamlessly, as they do on “Game,” a propulsive chunk of jangle-pop delivered at a punk pace.
Wishy have many strengths, but chief among them is their affinity for instrumental hooks that surface from the swirl and settle in your brain for the foreseeable future. They’re everywhere: A three-note idea that crests over and over again in the background of “Sick Sweet”; the skittering rhythm that underpins the title track; the arena-ready twin-guitar solo in “Persuasion”; the extra-crunchy final third of “Love on the Outside,” in which a jaunty pop tune turns into roaring riff-rock.
And then there’s the nursery-rhyme cadence of the album’s caustic closer, “Spit,” in which Krauter and Pitchkites sing, na-na-boo-boo-style: “Who’s gonna break my heart? Who’s gonna wear my mind out? Wish this choice was mine.” OK, that’s a vocal hook, but the point remains the same: “Triple Seven” spills over with these kinds of sounds, which also happen to be the kinds of sounds that keep people coming back again and again.
Coming up in a scene defined by hardcore and emo, Krauter and Pitchkites instead found themselves writing melodies in their heads while driving to work, pulling music from the air and arriving at a blearier, more ethereal interpretation of Midwest expanse. Initially, their music oscillated between hazy dream-pop and heavier alt-rock.
Sometimes gorgeous, sometimes festering, and always cathartic, “Triple Seven” is a vibrant and exhilarating document of self-discovery with the scope and heft of the bygone big-budget rock albums that inspired it. Turns out Wishy have made not only one of the best debut albums of the year, but also one of the most irresistible, unshakeable albums of the year as well. It takes more than just luck to be this good.
The Fat Angel Sings 