Rhian Teasdale is in love.
The frontwoman for the Isle of Wight’s unexpected indie rock darlings Wet Leg is sitting at a sunny cafe patio in L.A.’s Atwater Village, a warm grin showing off a set of silver charms glued to her teeth — some shaped like stars, one with three 9s, a reference to one of their song lyrics — as she talks about her relationship and finding “love at first sight.”
“There are so many love songs in the world already, it’s just not something I wanted to write about until I met my partner,” she says between sips of iced coffee. “It wasn’t an interesting subject to me.”
It’s a quiet April Monday, a week since Wet Leg officially came out of hibernation, releasing a new single, “Catch These Fists,” and announcing sophomore album Moisturizer, their first new release since taking over the indie music world three years ago. Founded by Teasdale and guitarist-vocalist Hester Chambers in 2019, Wet Leg was one of the biggest surprises in the music business in 2022 — perhaps even to themselves — as the post-punk rockers rose seemingly overnight from relative obscurity into bona fide indie superstars thanks to songs like “Wet Dream” and the similarly sardonic “Chaise Longue.” Their first album debuted at No. 1 in the U.K.
That hype turned into a world tour and arena dates opening for Harry Styles and Foo Fighters, and later a sweep in the alternative categories at the 2023 Grammy Awards, where Wet Leg beat out a stacked list of nominees including Björk, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Arcade Fire for alternative album. (They were also nominated for best new artist that year but lost to Samara Joy.)
Now Wet Leg’s back for more, but this time with an unexpected thematic turn. Less cutting sarcasm, more love songs. Nobody was more surprised at the tone shift than Teasdale herself. But shortly after recording the first album, she met her partner, a musician who is nonbinary, and that helped her realize her own queer identity after presenting as straight. That’s when the love songs started writing themselves.
“When you write a song, it’s a snapshot on how you’re feeling,” Teasdale explains. “I’m not consciously trying to write about a specific topic. But we started making the album and obviously my subconscious was like, ‘This one’s about love, oh this one too, and this one’s also about love.’ “
The music video for “davina mccall” from Wet Leg’s upcoming Moisturizer album depicts the bandmembers in claymation.
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Whereas 2022’s Wet Leg was mainly a Teasdale/Chambers composition, Moisturizer was made collaboratively with the rest of the band, which also consists of drummer Henry Holmes, multi-instrumentalist Josh Mobaraki and bass player Ellis Durand. The group rented out a home in the English countryside, where they holed up together in March 2024 to write and record in between “a fair bit of fucking around,” as Teasdale puts it.
“It felt good for everyone to have ownership over this thing we’re going to be touring for a while,” Teasdale says. “I don’t think there are any big egos in the room, so it’s never like relinquishing control. It’s just like, ‘What are we vibing with?’ ”
As the group gets ready for Moisturizer‘s release, Teasdale admits she’s feeling pressure, hoping the sophomore album lives up to expectations. “We’ve cocooned ourselves into such a deep burrow when we were making the album — we weren’t getting opinions from friends or people in the industry. That was a comfy place. But now we’re crawling out of this cozy hole. I’ll get little whispers of people’s opinions, and whether they’re good or whether they’re bad, I think that’s just making it a bit real.”
As Wet Leg’s grown more prominent, Teasdale acknowledges it’s been nice to be able to “ask for a few more things.” Still, even as a path toward higher stardom lies before them, Teasdale doesn’t want for much, other than “to keep doing what we’ve been doing” — evolving their sound, going on the road (in the past several years they’ve roamed everywhere from Europe to the U.S. to Oceania) — although maybe with a couple more rock star entitlements this time.
“If we go back to New Zealand, I demand we go to Hobbiton,” she says. “And maybe a few more days off when we’re on tour.”
This story appeared in the July 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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