Sitting across from me on my laptop, singer of the indie-pop band Wet, Kelly Zutrau, joins me from outside of her friend’s house somewhere in Maine. Wet just released their newest EP, ‘Pink Room’ a few weeks ago and Zutrau was tuning in on Zoom while visiting her friend in New England.
“It came to me at the right time,” she tells me, reflecting on the newest release.
‘Pink Room’ was released on July 8th, debuting seven stripped-down tracks filled with love songs and hopeful odes to heartbreaks, beautifully naming the wild range of emotions when it comes to love. Although stripped-down, Wet kept true to their roots through their honest and intentional lyrics and sounds but showed us a dreamier, slower side of themselves this time around.
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The EP was born out of the need to change things up during the pandemic, Zutrau tells me. Like most artists, she found herself caught in the whirlwind of the pandemic, questioning most of the things around her. The band was presented with the opportunity from the label in the Spring of 2020 to create a stripped-down album and they jumped right on it as a means to explore different sounds. This time, just for fun, Zutrau says.
“I was in the thick of working on a third more electronic produced-out album, so it was like suddenly kind of nice to have a separate outlet creative outlet that’s kind of more just me on my own and getting to sort of play around a little bit more and experiment.”
Even though the sound of this EP may be different from what we Wet fans are used to, the band still stayed true to their core, which is evident in Zutrau’s melodic soft voice and lyricism. Bringing back their atmospheric sounds and melodies, Wet brings us back into their dreamy world with a softer acoustic twist.
‘Pink Room’ was an experiment of sorts, Zutrau had said. But when most people think of an artist experimenting with their sound, they think of adding in synthesizers, drum samples, or maybe harmonic choir vocals. But for Wet, the experiment was in taking sound away. “It was very freeing,” Zutrau said of both the EP and the process.
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Historically, Wet’s albums have been intentionally produced with various complex sounds and instruments, veiled with intricate ambient tones to create an atmospheric storyline. But this time around, most of the songs were just Zutrau and an instrument, telling even more intimate stories.
“I thought it would be kind of interesting to hear what it would sound like to put out basically a much more raw version of these songs,” she says. “I think some people really enjoy the stripped away sound of just like a voice in a room and a piano or a voice in a room and a shitty-sounding autoharp because it’s kind of feels real. You can almost be in that space with the music.”
But in order to fully write her music the way she felt she needed to, Zutrau found herself needing to let go of conventional standards of success and surrendering to the moment of just creating, she says. “I just felt like there’s no point in having any expectations about this and it only muddies up the vision for the project,” she said. “Like you just want to make stuff that feels really exciting to you.”
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With little expectation and deadlines from the label and herself, Zutrau was able to write ‘Pink Room’ with patience, allowing her to fully immerse herself in the creative process. This, she says, caused a shift in her that allowed for more freedom in creativity.
“I think it really reframed why I do music – or do anything,” she tells me. “I feel like I had a reset where I was like, I only want to do things that feel meaningful.”
‘Pink Room’ follows Wet’s just as intimate but more produced third album, ‘Letter Blue’. It was when writing that album she started to feel a need to shift her own expectations, the need to break out of the conventional standards of what success meant to her, and to just simply write the music she wanted to, she says.
She found herself searching for more out of her music, she said, feeling almost “disturbed” by some of her previous releases and trying to reach the same success as some of their earlier albums had.
“I think so much of my self-worth and identity was wrapped up in the success of the music and what people thought of it,” she said. “What I think happened was, it became so important to me, it was almost like part of my survival.”
Then, Zutrau realized that she had to give up all those expectations and begin to create solely for herself. “I think this time period led me to surrender and just not care anymore how it was received,” she said. “But I still felt confident that I want to keep making things and that I do get a lot out of that. And for now, I’m going to keep doing that.”
Wet included the demo version of ‘Blades Of Grass’ from ‘Letter Blue’ on this EP. “I felt like I kept coming back to the demo version of that song and I thought there was something kind of interesting about how intimate it was,” she says. “I felt like lyrically it was very important to me.”
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‘Blades Of Grass’ depicts that moment Zutrau was searching to get out of perfectly, she says. “You can hear on the lyrics of ‘Blades Of Grass’, that’s exactly like the moment that I’m talking about like, feeling like not proud of anything I’ve done, really beaten down by my path and the choices I made, and just bad about it,” she says. “That’s a reflection of when I was still really struggling, I would say.”
With the new space she had to write ‘Pink Room’, Zutrau was focused more so on capturing the time she was in rather than making sure every piece of it was perfect. “With this, I would say I had less of a standard where I was like, let’s just do what feels good and see how it goes,” she says. “The goal was more to capture a moment and a time and an energy that felt true, rather than to overdo it and kind of draw it out too long. It was important that it… reflected the time.”
As part of her process of letting go creatively, Zutrau played around with song structure in this album as well. Some of the tracks are shorter or don’t fit into the typical song structures, which she says is all a part of her just knowing what to do with each song.
“It was a pretty intuitive concept. It was just like, see what comes out and once it feels like enough, leave it alone and move on to the next one,” she said.
Wet has always intelligently articulated the messiness and complexities of love and heartbreak, experiences that aren’t always easy to put into words, and the tracks on ‘Pink Room’ are no exception. But somehow, Zutrau has always found those perfect words through that same natural, intuitive process.
“With songwriting for me, it comes, and then it doesn’t,” she says. “It’s usually based on things I’m experiencing in my own relationships or reflecting on past relationships and when they come to a head for me, where it just feels painful enough or present enough that I need to say it out loud or put it put it down on paper or something.”
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Even dating back to their earlier work with songs like ‘Don’t Wanna Be Your Girl’ and ‘You’re The Best’, Wet has beautifully encapsulated the intricacies of these emotions both through Zutrau’s intelligent lyricism but through ambiance and sound as well.
Wet collaborated with friend and returning producer Reed Black on ‘Pink Room’, who Zutrau says fully supported her in her expedition of trying new sounds. “It was a natural process. It was just like, let’s take as long as we want, let’s see how it goes and just be experimental and have fun,” she said.
Wet also brought in keyboardist Buddy Ross to collaborate on this EP, who famously is known for jamming alongside Frank Ocean and is one of Zutrau’s personal favorite producers. “We clicked and we just started writing together and he ended up doing a lot of the album,” she said.
Zutrau found herself in awe of Ross’ piano work, noting his church upbringing and his use of gospel chords. “It’s like my favorite kind of playing. It’s just so epic and life-encompasing,” she laughed. “I don’t know, there’s something about it, I just love gospel chords.”
Zutrau didn’t know if this EP would ever see the light of day or if they would even tour again amidst the pandemic, but being between all of that unknown was really freeing creatively, she says. “There were just so many what if’s so it felt like it was more just about the joy of making something and playing around.”
But Zutrau found that throughout the process of doing something just for fun, some of the best work comes out. “You’re making art from a more pure place,” she tells me. “You’re making choices based on what feels good and what feels interesting.”
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‘Pink Room’ EP is out now.
Words: McKenzie Morgan
