“You can do what you want to do (every day is yours)/ Baby, it’s your life/ (That’s right) It’s such a sick ride.” That’s Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites, Wishy’s dual vocalists and songwriters, wrapping their voices around each other, symbiotic, coming to terms to with a conclusion: Life is, simply put, fucking crazy. In the whirlwind first few years of the band, there had been breakups, new love affairs, and yearning all while Wishy stormed the indie scene as an instantly beloved new act. That revelation by way of pep-talk arrives in the chorus of “Sensational.” Originating through Krauter’s experimentation with drum loops, the song is what should be an unholy fusion of sugary grunge and dream-pop. Yet Wishy’s latest jubilant remix of the past bears all their trademarks: zany lyrics transfiguring melancholia into freedom, an instant classic chorus that already feels like an old friend. It’s all quintessentially Wishy, and yet unlike any Wishy song you’ve yet heard—which made it the perfect song to give their vibrant sophomore album Nature’s Pill its name.
Wishy’s origins go way back, to when Krauter and Pitchkites met in high school in Indianapolis. Some years and a few projects later, they joined forces to form Wishy, rounding out the lineup with guitarist Dimitri Morris, bassist Mitch Collins, and drummer Conner Host. The group’s musical synergy was intense from the jump and the beginning of their career has been a prolific burst: the Mana and Paradise EPs in 2023, debut LP Triple Seven in 2024, and a follow-up EP Planet Popstar in 2025. After those releases met acclaim and the band’s stature rose, the conception of Nature’s Pill was fundamentally different.
“The songs were still flowing, but this album was more intentional,” Pitchkites says. “There was also some pressure of knowing we were working toward a definitive project,” Krauter adds, drawing a line from the early days when the band had a vault of material but hadn’t yet built an audience. “It gave these songs a more cohesive world to exist in, even if that world is a Pandora’s Box of everything.”
The entire project was a more collaborative effort. After writing separately for all of their debut, Krauter and Pitchkites sat down to write together as much as solo; Morris and Collins contributed to the writing process. The group reconvened with Triple Seven co-producer Ben Lumsdaine in Los Angeles, where the quintet packed into a tiny studio and tracked half the songs live in the room, imbuing the album with the immediate energy of a band in sync after heavy touring. It gave them the ability to synthesize an even greater array of touchstones this time around, with the ‘90s dream-pop and alt-rock of Triple Seven fusing with ‘80s college rock and ‘00s indie. “We were getting a bit more twee with it, embracing the young hipster headspace we had in high school,” Krauter says.
Just as their sound is often a swirl of various alternative and indie traditions, Wishy’s new songs collide the highs, pitfalls, and banal detritus of human experience alike. Nature’s Pill re-examines some of Wishy’s favored themes under new lights, jumping off from breakup songs to more abstract meditations on forlornness, romantic intention, lust. “We take that stuff and almost write in a fictional, hypothetical frame of mind,” Krauter explains. “The songs capture romantic frustration and neurotic desire and the melodrama that ensues from simply being a person with emotions experiencing relationships and inner turmoil. But it’s embellished—nothing we do is overly confessional.”
“It’s historical fiction,” Pitchkites quips.
Yet Wishy render even their heaviest, most poignant moments with humor and color. Far from being a downer lovelorn record, Nature’s Pill also lights up with open horizons glimpsed after romantic fallout: new people to meet, new places to live, new sounds to chase. And when there are moments of abject heartbreak or loneliness, they spike it with their customary cheekiness.
It’s already there in opener “All The Rage,” a jangly rush in which Krauter channels the teenage angst that can descend again even in adult breakups. From there, Nature’s Pill showcases Wishy’s mastery of pop hooks over and over, twisting structures and delivering unshakeable choruses in every song. In “Covergirl,” Pitchkites tackles another “all the rage” topic, writing about the emptiness of situationships over layers of overdriven guitar that buoy her to a chorus that conveys numb despondence and gorgeous daydream simultaneously. Whether the swooning glide of “Lovesick” conjures its namesake state of being or the hazy summer afternoon strums of “Mona Lisa” crest into a singalong outro, Wishy’s music seems to emerge from a fantasy realm: triggering memories of late ‘90s and early ‘00s crossover alt hits, but rendered with Wishy’s sharp songwriting acumen and free-for-all verve. Fittingly, it all culminates in the proudly “delulu” closer “Party World,” with Krauter singing what amounts to a manifesto for Nature’s Pill: “Life’s a game where nothing’s out of bounds/ And love’s a circus/ Everyone’s a clown/ It’s no big deal cause everybody knows that/ Heaven is a state of mind.”
Underneath it all, Wishy locate a tenacity to keep trying anyway. “Being in an indie band feels bizarre when the world is on fire,” Krauter concludes. “What can you do at the end of the day other than carve out some space—at the very least I have my imagination and I can invite others to join me there. At a certain point you need to say fuck it and roll with it.” Sometimes you can’t make sense of it all. Nature’s Pill finds Wishy gleefully giving into the madness. After all: If life is absurd, all the possibilities are up to you.
