Crafting vibrant, genre-blurring anthems with an unshakable commitment to authenticity, NYC indie-pop outfit MisterWives have long been driven by musical defiance.
Fronted by the inimitable Mandy Lee, the quintet’s 2023 album ‘Nosebleeds’ took a daring leap. Shedding the glossy optimism of previous full-length ‘Superbloom’ for something much rawer and more vulnerable, the collection of songs emerged as an exploration of inner turmoil and resilience. Rooted in punk inspiration, angst, and catharsis, it served as an exhale for Mandy and her bandmates, embracing anger, pain, and frustration within defiant pop-punk melodies.
An album of unrivalled personal importance, earlier this year MisterWives introduced the world to ‘Nosebleeds: Encore’ edition. A reimagined version of the record celebrating women in music, its carefully curated lineup of female collaborators sees a new guest artist bring a unique perspective to each track. Adding new layers of meaning with the help of PVRIS, Against The Current, Meet Me @ The Altar, Charlotte Sands and more, the result is a collaborative powerhouse, uniting scene icons and rising stars to create something undoubtedly special.
Unleashed upon a musical landscape that has historically limited women’s voices, we sat down with Mandy – alongside bassist Will Hehir and drummer Etienne Bowler – to dive into how ‘Nosebleeds: Encore’ came to life, the process of relinquishing control in favour of creative freedom, and what this experience has taught them about music, collaboration, and the value of staying true to themselves.
ROCK SOUND: Before we get into the album’s ‘Encore’ edition, let’s go back to the original release of ‘Nosebleeds’ last year. Following on from ‘Superbloom’, there’s a huge difference in the sound of those two records. What did you want to accomplish going into album four?
MANDY LEE: “It’s so crazy to think that it’s only been a year since that record came out, because to us it feels like five years ago! There was definitely a big jump between ‘Superbloom’ and ‘Nosebleeds’, and on album four we wanted to go deeper and let honesty lead the way. I was in a place where I couldn’t sugarcoat how much I was struggling and how angry I was, but on previous records I’d always tried to look through rose-coloured lenses and find the silver linings. I think being able to find the positives in things is important, but I realised that I was actually repressing a lot. I had been burying these emotions, but a much healthier way of dealing with that was letting it out through the music.
Before ‘Nosebleeds’, I had actually written another album that felt more in the realm of ‘Superbloom’. At some point though, something clicked within me, and I realised that I couldn’t do it anymore. I don’t want to lie, and music is the last place where you should try to cover things up. We wrote ‘Out Of Your Mind’, and that became the genesis of letting all of this stuff surface. We had so much fun with it. Music is always cathartic, but as someone who’s always seen expressing negative emotions as bad, it was really healing for me to learn that those feelings are just as valid as happiness or joy.”
ETIENNE BOWLER: “We took Mandy to a rage room and told her to smash some stuff. After a while she was like, ‘Wait a minute, this is fun?!’ It was during a time where things were hard, and it was COVID time, so everything kept getting harder. No matter how much you tried to stay positive, it was rough. Writing that album was very freeing.”
RS: Especially given everything the world had endured over those last few years; was there a reason you felt more drawn to the angst and rage of punk?
MANDY: “It was definitely the right time for it, but it’s music we’ve always loved. Over time as musicians, you get comfortable with the sound that’s expected of you, but we all love so many different genres of music. There’s been an angsty song on every MisterWives record, but it’s never been the focus of the album. The essence of punk has always been a part of us though, because if we were told to go right, we would always go left. The backbone of our band has always been ‘You’re telling us to zig? Well, we’re going to zag’.”
WILL HEHIR: “It’s the anti-conformity thing. Everything in the music industry is, ‘This is what you do, and this is how you do it’, but all of these rules are made up.”
RS: Listening to the album, it’s clear that this sound is very much in your DNA…
WILL: “I grew up listening to Lamb Of God, Slayer, and Metallica. Whatever was fastest, loudest and angriest, that was what appealed to me. I don’t know the lyrics to any of those songs that I’ve listened to hundreds of times, there was just a visceral feeling of heavy drums, distorted guitars and angry vocals. That emotion has always intrigued me, which is crazy because I’m a super laidback guy.”
ETIENNE: “I was more into the lighter stuff like Blink-182 and Green Day when I was younger, but I remember No Doubt having a real impact on me. They showed me this middle ground, because they have pop songs, but they also have a lot of punk influence. It’s the same with bands like Paramore, and even a lot of Turnstile songs.”
MANDY: “I actually grew up listening to Motown and folk music, so it wasn’t until I started playing music with these guys as a teenager that I discovered the scene. That’s the beauty of being in a band, because you get to throw all your inspirations together and influence each other.”
RS: Coming into the ‘Encore’ edition then, where did the idea to celebrate the album’s anniversary in that way come from?
MANDY: “For starters, the landscape of music right now is so brutal. You used to tour an album for two years once it came out, but now you’ve got a week for it to go viral, and if nothing pops off it’s time to move on and write another album. I was feeling burnt out, fatigued, but also disappointed because this album was such a celebration. I didn’t want to move onto the next thing because I’m really proud of these songs, and I wanted to give them another life. We knew that we wanted to do a deluxe version with new music, but we wanted to do features too.
We had never done features in over ten years of being a band, and if we were going to do it, it only felt right for it to be female artists. This record is all about a woman freeing suppressed emotions, so I wanted to lean on friends of mine who have been through similar experiences. There’s not a single woman I’ve ever worked with who hasn’t been through these things, so I felt like we needed to lift up this community and highlight the incredible women who inspire me. That’s what this record is about, so it became a beautiful way to celebrate it and bring new life into it. It was a very ambitious idea and we’re so thankful to all the artists who were down to be a part of it. It was a dream come true for me to work with that many amazing women.”
RS: Looking at the collaborators on the record, there’s such a mix. There are legends, newcomers, friends… But obviously they’re all women. How did you go about compiling that list?
MANDY: “I definitely wanted to highlight newer artists. There are people like Meg Smith, Juliana Madrid and Moody Joody on there, who are all artists that I found on Spotify or through friends. Then there are people like PVRIS and Betty Who, who are artists that we’ve come up in the same scene as and have always been huge fans of. It’s weird asking your friends to do features, but we told them all that there was zero pressure, and they were all so gracious. Everybody crushed it, and each person took their song to a whole new level. I definitely wanted to have a full spectrum of artists I love and listen to, people I had just discovered, and people who have inspired me. It’s such an honour to have them all on it.”
RS: When you approach a project like this, it’s important to be able to show the tracks in a different light. To celebrate the original sound, but to add a new perspective to that somehow. How did you want to develop the tracks with the ‘Encore’ versions?
MANDY: “It was really contingent on the artists. Some songs were just the perfect fit for certain artists, and everybody fit in so perfectly. Everybody felt like they had their own song, and we considered their voice and their style when we were working out what they could add to it. Pairing off the songs to the artists was surprisingly the easiest part, because it was so obvious to me.”
ETIENNE: “We just let people do what they wanted with the songs. We wanted them to sing exactly how they wanted, and some of them wanted to stick to the original style of the song, whilst others wanted to change a couple things. Some of them wrote new verses, and it was important to just let them be totally free with it.”
MANDY: “That’s what gives it a new perspective, lyrically and melodically. Everybody just put their own flair on it, and that freedom allowed them to connect with it more.”
RS: As a band who historically haven’t had many guest artists on tracks, how was the process of letting go of the reins and allowing other musicians to add their flourishes to your art?
MANDY: “As someone who loves control, or the illusion of control, I loved it. It was nice to be able to send things out to these artists that I trusted to do their thing. It was freeing, and it’s the opposite of what we usually experience. When you’re writing and recording, you’re so in the weeds of it, so it’s nice to relinquish that and let everybody run wild with it. Being in a band though, we’re naturally collaborative. Working with people isn’t a foreign thing to us because we’re a band of five people… We’ve had to become team players.”
ETIENNE: “Also, it helped that we didn’t receive anything that we didn’t like!”
MANDY: “Absolutely, and now we’re doing it live on tour, I find myself wanting to sing the lines that other people added on these versions. It’s given it so much new life.”
WILL: “That speaks to the value of collaboration and allowing people the time to sit there and digest it. One of the biggest struggles in the music industry today is that time does not exist. Everything is an elevator pitch, and so when people actually really care about the music, you can create a project as a labour of love. They’re actually willing to commit themselves and put forth their best effort, rather than checking off a box, sending it out, and not caring what happens to it.”
RS: When we’re talking about this expelling of energy and embrace of feminine rage, ‘Vultures’ is a perfect example. Tell us more about working with Lynn Gunn to bring that track to life…
MANDY: “She killed it. We wrote that song right after we got home from tour, and sometimes writing can feel incredibly laborious and tedious, but other times it pours out of you. That song came together super quickly, and Lynn was on the road at the time. We didn’t get to go in and work together in-person for it, but I’ve worked with her before. She’s a genius, an incredible producer, writer, singer… She can do it all. She was working on her mixtape, so we said that we completely understood if she didn’t have the time, but we sent her the track. She sent us some stuff back, and she got it on the first take. It was effortless, and she took it to a whole new level. Her part gives it so much more angst, and every night I scream that part onstage. It’s so cool to hear other people’s perspectives on your songs.”
WILL: “I think that’s the magic of it, because it’s the first take. When we’re asking people to do these collaborations, they don’t know it well enough to over-analyse it. It’s much more gut instinct.”
ETIENNE: “I think that especially works with a song like ‘Vultures’, because it’s one of those that feels like a visceral punch to the face.”
RS: Speaking about some of the scene’s newer breed who appear on the record, did working with artists like Meet Me @ The Altar, Charlotte Sands and Taylor Acorn give you hope for the future of women in alternative music?
MANDY: “Hugely. It’s always given me hope to see women in music, but now there’s more space and safety. Even outside of the alternative scene, the girlies are winning in pop music right now. It’s not a one size fits all thing, and everybody’s bringing their own flavour and flair to the table. That’s something that hasn’t always been rewarded, or even accepted, so I’m super stoked for women in this industry.
People love to get competitive with it and be like, ‘Oh, do you really like her?’ or ‘Who sings better?’, but the actual women in music don’t give a fuck about that. These outside, external forces are always trying to pit women against each other, and it’s tiring. Why is it so hard to let women lift each other up, and for it to be genuine and sincere? We’ve come so far, but there is still so much deeply rooted misogyny, especially out on the road.”
ETIENNE: “I remember around six years ago; we were told that women’s voices don’t work with alternative music. There was definitely a part of us going into this process that wanted to prove how ridiculous that was by recording an alternative record entirely consisting of women’s voices.”
WILL: “I don’t necessarily relish the idea of TikTok or social media, but it’s definitely helped to democratise people’s exposure to music. There’s still a lot of gatekeeping, but an artist is an artist. They can pave their own career on platforms like that.”
MANDY: “Yeah, it gives the gatekeepers less power. When we were kids, I used to get told all the time how to look, how much weight to lose, and what to sound like. Of course, that still exists, but it makes me happy to know that the younger generation doesn’t have to deal with that in the same way. It’s good to see the progress, and the camaraderie of people not being silent about it anymore.”
RS: Even when we look at the artwork for the album, everyone is placed on an even playing field. How important was it to acknowledge that this isn’t just a MisterWives project with some guest contributions, but a full collaborative effort?
MANDY: “That was always the plan for the artwork, and that’s exactly the reason why. Originally, I wanted all of us to be photographed in person, but everybody was touring and had crazy schedules. What we ended up doing was the next best thing. There was never an alternate cover, it was always going to be something to show that everybody is equal and a part of it. It’s not just MisterWives, I wanted it to feel like a supergroup, and I’m happy that it translates that way.”
RS: Coming out of these collaborations, how has this process impacted the future of MisterWives?
MANDY: “Our sound always evolves and piggybacks off what came before, and I love that it’s a natural progression. It was really rewarding to dig into the honesty and not be afraid of the messy feelings. For me, that was such a moment of freedom, and I want to take that with me into whatever we do next. The landscape of the music industry has gotten really hard, but we’re always going to remain true to ourselves and highlight our community. It’s exciting to see where that will evolve sonically, but after playing this type of music live, I definitely need more angst moving forward.
We had fans help vote for the current setlist, and the whiplash of going from a song like ‘Vultures’ to one like ‘Reflections’ is so funny, but also really beautiful. There are all these versions of us, and that’s a good message for people to hear. We’re multifaceted, we don’t have to stay in one lane, and it’s okay to celebrate all the different sides of yourself. That’s what it is to be human.”
WILL: “It’s easy for people in the industry to pigeonhole people, but that’s not necessarily how the fans think. We can do these jarring changes in sound, and they’re behind us in every step.”
MANDY: “They’re singing everything with us, and we’re so grateful for that. I was definitely nervous coming into this album cycle. I was worried that we were going to lose a bunch of our fans, but if anything, it’s invited more people in. It’s not lost on us how much our community has been down to let us expand and flex different muscles. They’ve allowed us to grow.”
‘Nosebleeds: Encore’ is out now via Photo Finish Records / Resilient Little Records.
