Speaking with Natalie Lu – the pixie-princess, nu-gaze musician known as Wisp – it’s clear she’s the ultimate fangirl living out her own fairy tale. Whether posting on r/shoegaze, touring with Slowdive, or shaking before meeting her idols Whirr (her Insta handle is @whirrwhoreforlyfe), Lu radiates the passion and devotion you’d expect from the torchbearer of a generation raised on algorithmic heartbreak.

After all, just two years ago, she was a computer science major at San Francisco State, recording demos in her bedroom on Apple earbuds. But then her breakout track Your face – layered over a beat from producer grayskies – went viral, its gauzy shoegaze textures cutting through the feed. She dropped out, signed to Interscope, and moved to LA to record her recently-released debut album, If Not Winter.

Seeped in dreamwave, hyperpop, and hardcore distortion, the record casts Wisp at the heart of a Zelda-like fantasy quest – soundtracked by ambient birdsong, church bells, ghostly piano, and warped strings, as she gathers talismans and stories across enchanted realms. A narrative that echoes IRL: touring the world, receiving fan-made gifts, like a crochet bag stitched in homage to her jet-black Hello Kitty guitar.

Shana Chandra: Natalie, congratulations on your album release – how are you feeling?
Natalie Lu: I feel very overwhelmed but happy! My friends, band and team have been really supportive and I feel so much love from everyone, especially the fans.

SC: Let’s take things back to your track Your face – it had such crazy success, and you recorded it in your bedroom. Did you imagine this reaction, or were you completely blown away?
NL: When I released Your face, [even though] I wanted to make music full-time, I didn’t really expect it to blow up, I’d just posted it on Soundcloud for me and my friends to listen to. I then posted it on TikTok as a joke, not knowing how TikTok worked, or how I could post it in a specific way to hit the algorithm. So when it blew up overnight, I was really shocked. It felt great, but I was a bit confused in the beginning on what was happening. Once I started posting more and more, I got the gist of it, and it has become a very naturally beautiful thing for me to do.

SC: Then record labels started calling and you finally landed with Interscope – why did Interscope feel like the right fit for you?
NL: Originally when I started getting traction online, I was taking a bunch of calls by myself and a lot of these labels were taking advantage a bit – because I had no idea of what I was getting myself into. I would hear a really big number, and to me it was big at the time because I was barely making money; I was in college and working as a part-time barista. So hearing them give me all these crazy deal pitches, I thought, “Wow, that’s a lot of money.” But once I met my manager and we flew to LA a bunch to take some of these meetings in person, I learned a lot through the way she talked to them. Just by observing and really soaking in the conversations, I was really able to learn a lot more about the music industry. Meeting my A&R’s at Interscope, it was an instant click. I felt they like were really attentive and caring for my craft and had a great vision for it as well. I had a show with my band at the time at my college and Sean, my A&R, he flew all the way out to San Francisco to come visit. I think at the time I only had 5,000 monthly listeners, so it was crazy.

SC: With your first EP, Pandora, there were a few bedroom tracks, but you also went into the studio for the first time. What about If Not Winter – is that all studio?
NL: For If Not Winter, everything was produced in a studio. The only times it felt like I was going back to the same way that I produced the Pandora EP, and I was doing things how I used to with See you soon and Your face, was that I find it a lot easier to come up with the vocal melodies on my own at home. I’ll work on a track on the studio, bring it back home and use my earbuds to sing over it. Then I’ll bring it back to the studio and do it on an actual mic. There was also this very special feeling – I remember it very vividly – when I recorded the vocals to Your face and See you soon, so remembering that feeling and how naturally it flowed out of me, I figured it would still be the same, and it is.

SC: Do you have a favourite track on the album – or one that stands out?
NL: I would say If Not Winter is my favourite song on the album. I mean, it was special enough for me to name the title after it. During the time that I wrote that song, I was going through a pretty rough emotional patch in my life, so being able to express myself and let my thoughts flow freely into that song gave me a chance to be very vulnerable and very true to myself. Wearing my heart on my sleeve played such a big part in ensuring this album meant a lot to me, and I’m also hoping that my words reach other people who are able to relate [to it] as well.

SC: If Not Winter has this medieval fantasy quest narrative, and you weave in mythical language and symbolism. How did that come about?
NL: The inspiration behind the narrative of the album comes from my daydreams that I wanted to live out as a kid. Watching Harry Potter, Barbie, and all these princess movies growing up. I even had a princess-decorated room in my childhood home. Growing up with this media and how immersed I was in these fantasy worlds, I wanted to build an aura that other people could be immersed in, and not just children, but people of all ages. So, having the transitions in the album was really important to me – having the interlude Latvia was also very important. I wrote and produced that track with Stint, and I told him that I wanted it to feel exactly how I felt when I was in Latvia recording the Sword music video and walking up to the gates of a castle. When we were filming that scene, I was hearing the bell chime, and waltz music coming from that castle. It was just a huge coincidence that all of these sounds were happening at this exact moment. I think it was the only time in my life where I genuinely felt like I was living in a dream. Nothing felt real and I felt like an actual princess. That feeling really inspired the themes of the album.

“The inspiration behind the narrative of the album comes from my daydreams that I wanted to live out as a kid.”

SC: You do this world-building so well – and it translates not just through your music, but in the way you dress and your videos too. Who inspires you aesthetically?
NL: I can’t pinpoint which artist influences my style, but a lot of the movies that I watch nowadays influence the vibe that I’m going for, and I’m also a very avid Pinterest user. I feel like Pinterest is the most inspirational place for me, even for lyrics. Sometimes if I don’t know what to write about, I’ll find a really pretty image that will inspire me to connect a metaphor from that image into my lyrics. I always say that when I feel uninspired, I should take a walk, and soak up the things around me, but I’m kind of a lazy and unathletic person. So having Pinterest on my phone serves [that] purpose, inspiring me with different animals, images and colours. I also take a lot of inspiration from dark gothic [references]. Nosferatu is a good example of a movie that inspired me visually. I think that also some of the darkness is really heavily inspired by where I grew up. I grew up in the Bay Area of Ocean Beach, and it’s a very foggy, elusive beach. It’s not sunny ever, it’s cold and windy, and being able to walk along that beach after school and whenever I was feeling down, it definitely stuck in my brain. All those visuals of the waves and the dark sea are very inspiring to my creative process.

“It gets people really excited that genres can be revitalised and re-innovated.”

SC: With the success of Your face, I’m wondering if you’ve found a favourite fan video or TikTok that uses one of your songs?
NL: There are so many. I love when people post their cats to Your face, because a lot of people have black and white cats and the contrast with the lyrics I think is so cute.

SC: And what’s the most memorable gift that a fan has given you?
NL: At my Austin show on my first headline tour, someone gifted me a crochet bag of my Hello Kitty guitar.

SC: That’s amazing. There’s been a lot of chat about how you’re one of the faces of nu-gaze, revitalising shoegaze for a new generation, why do you think the genre is having such a moment again?
NL: When it first started, especially around Quannnic and [their song] Life Imitates Life being really big, and Deftones blowing up on TikTok, I feel like a lot of kids, especially teenagers, were yearning for something refreshing and new. Obviously, alt-rock and shoegaze has been around for ages, but when someone rediscovers something and they weren’t around at the time that it originated, they bring those older genres back to life with a new light on them. It gets people really excited that genres can be revitalised and re-innovated. A lot of this music, online at least, is portrayed as ‘cool kid’ music, and I think that’s super valid, because when I listen to Deftones and shoegaze and other alt bands, I feel cool myself. It’s music that lifts my spirits, it’s perfect for late-night drives.

hair JADIS JOLIE at EDMA WORLD; make-up ALEX LEVY; photography assistant EMILIE GATEAU; fashion assistant ZANDER SLAYTON, CHRISTIAN WHELAN