‘This weird dream just keeps going!' Wet Leg on overnight success, sexual epiphanies and facing fears

The Guardian

04-04-2025

Wet Leg's Rhian Teasdale looks like a pop star from a different era. She walks into a bar in east London wearing a giant, floor-length pale-pink padded coat. She has bleached eyebrows, dip-dyed hair, drawn-on freckles and jewels stuck to her nails and teeth. For a moment, Top of the Pops could be on primetime TV and a copy of Smash Hits in my bag. But then Wet Leg's story always did feel anachronistic. In 2021, they managed what indie bands don't often manage any more and became an overnight success. That June, they released their first single, Chaise Longue, a deadpan, perfectly simple and cheerfully daft megahit; they conquered the US and Japan, toured arenas and topped the album charts with their scathing, self-titled debut, scoring two Brit awards and two Grammys.
They were still touring that album last summer, supporting Foo Fighters in stadiums. But eventually they found time to make a new one. Trailed by the punchy, indie-sleazy Catch These Fists, Moisturizer otherwise largely ditches their trademark death-stare sarcasm in favour of stompy but soppy love songs. Teasdale lives in London and we are meeting in person, but Hester Chambers, the band's co-founder and lead guitarist, lives on the Isle of Wight, where Wet Leg met and formed. (Having written their debut alone, this time, they co-wrote with drummer Henry Holmes, guitarist Joshua Mobaraki and bassist Ellis Durand.) Tracking Chambers down will prove a trickier task, but more on that later.
Today, Teasdale is fresh from getting a tattoo. When we meet, she reveals the new vine-like shapes snaking up the sides of her stomach. 'It's the same artist that did this,' she says, showing me more of her ink. 'Which is kind of like a three-headed spider lady. She does loads of elves and mythical beings and swords and wizards.' There has always been something a bit otherworldly about Wet Leg. Their early videos were jokey but unnerving, a creepy hybrid of folklore and pop culture. They appeared at the Brits accompanied by Morris dancers. For Moisturizer's Aphex-Twin-esque artwork, a goblin-like Teasdale stares at the camera, while Chambers hides her face. Their nails are long, sharp and deadly looking. They are upping the uncanny.
But in spring 2021, Wet Leg were just a hopeful guitar band, signed to Domino, with Chaise Longue in their back pocket. What did Teasdale think was going to happen next? 'We were completely naive and, in some ways, that was good,' she says. 'I just thought we were going to keep on working our regular jobs. Even if you're quite high up on a festival bill, you can't support yourself from that alone, especially in a band with five people.'
What actually happened was that Wet Leg toured the world solidly for three years, playing countless festivals – Dave Grohl came out to scream with them at Coachella – and as support for Harry Styles' global arena tour after he covered their single Wet Dream on BBC Radio 1. Was there any danger of burnout? 'I did get homesick a few times,' Teasdale concedes. 'I had a couple of emergency flights, where I'd fly home for one day and my partner would cook me dinner and then I'd go again.' What did she want when she got home? 'Beans. Cheese and beans on toast.' Luxury! 'Sometimes with Marmite,' she sighs, happily.
In earlier interviews, Wet Leg sometimes seemed baffled by all the attention. Their interviews could be vague and peppered with in-jokes; it rarely looked as if they were taking themselves seriously. Watching footage of them on the Grammys red carpet shows a distinct clash between the sincerity of a US reporter and two British women gamely giving it a go. Chambers mostly looks alarmed, while Teasdale describes her choice of outfit with a deadpan: 'I just wanted to get my bum out.'
Being from the Isle of Wight, Teasdale says now: 'To find yourself at some weird Grammys afterparty together, it's just funny. It's extremely easy to realise how ridiculous everything is, because we've known each other from being teenagers.' It is not that they weren't taking it seriously. 'I can't really speak for the others, but I've had so many weird jobs. And whatever weird job I've had, something in me does want to try really hard.' What's the weirdest? 'I was a character at a theme park,' she says, a little reluctantly. Go on … 'I was this thing called a Squawk Bird, a puppet you have to get inside. You have to make all the sounds.'
The theme park was on the Isle of Wight, where three of the band live. After a few days of trying to arrange a chat with Chambers, she asks if she can instead answer my questions by email. Chambers has anxiety. 'My initial thought was: 'Sorry, I can't, I'm too scared,'' she writes. 'These past years have been a crash course in learning about myself, and one of those [lessons] is that my social anxiety won't be therapied away.'
Chambers admits that certain aspects of band life can be challenging. 'Sometimes I have no idea how I manage to get on the stage,' she writes. 'Rhian said to me, feel the fear and do it anyway. That's helped a lot. We never thought it would get this far, so it wasn't really a problem before. But now we're here.' What did getting here feel like? 'It was such a weird and unexpected journey [that] I assumed it would be over before we knew it, like a long summer holiday, just riding the wave before it spat us out. I still have that voice saying 'Don't get too comfy', but it's drowned out a little by the excitement of having made a second record and getting to play some more gigs together.'
I ask Teasdale if she feels protective towards Chambers. She isn't sure. 'Yeah? But then I don't know if it's because I'm more naive than Hester. Hester is very intelligent, so I think, in our own ways, we're both protective of each other.'
In early 2024, having finally finished touring, the band stayed in an Airbnb in Southwold, Suffolk, and started working on the songs that would become Moisturizer. In one not-so-serious interview in summer 2022, they claimed to have already written and finished a second album. 'That was a lie,' Teasdale says, serenely. 'Everyone was like: 'Don't you feel the pressure? Aren't you scared?' So we just said we'd done it.'
But wasn't she scared? 'Of course,' she says. 'There's that noise in your head that we didn't have last time. But it's just not very helpful. And it's helped so much, having the five of us writing together, because sometimes I'd go down in the morning and be like: 'I just can't. I don't have anything to give today, nothing sounds like music.' And Ellis would just be like: 'Don't worry about it, dude.''
In a sign of how much the music industry has changed, the Airbnb was an extravagance. 'Something I've learned the hard way is that the more money you chuck at something, the worse it is creatively,' says Teasdale. 'The more money you spend on something, the less it becomes yours. That's a really freeing observation. Just having a good idea is sometimes the strongest …' She catches herself and breaks into a mocking, singsong voice. 'A good idea and a pure heart,' she jokes. 'Please don't write that.'
Rather than trying to replicate the Chaise Longue formula, Wet Leg simplified everything, shooting for songs that would be fun to play live. As a result, Moisturizer has more muscle than its predecessor. There is a hint of Nine Inch Nails and Post-era Björk; most of its tracks would tear up an indie disco dancefloor.
Its subject matter is also more straightforward. There are still a couple of scorching kiss-offs: Catch These Fists is about being chatted up by a sleazy guy ('I just threw up in my mouth / When he just tried to ask me out'), while Mangetout gives short shrift to a 'washed-up, irrelevant' enemy, telling him to 'get lost forever'. But the record generally steps away from caustic put-downs and radiates romance.
Why? Love, of course. Teasdale met her partner at a festival in Portugal, in the thick of the madness, at the end of 2021. It was the first time Wet Leg had played outside the UK. 'We were all so excited,' she says. And then? 'It was love at first sight. Literally. It was just an energy. It was just like: oh. Ohhh! Because of course I wasn't looking for love, in any capacity, at all. But that's what they say, isn't it? It always comes when you least expect it.'
Her partner is non-binary; Teasdale prefers not to reveal their identity. Until that moment, Teasdale had always assumed that she was straight. 'It's not very mysterious,' she says. 'The thing with queer love, as well, is that, if you're female-presenting, people assume you're best friends.'
When Wet Leg were writing their first album, Teasdale was nursing a broken heart. During the band's ascent, the ex-boyfriend in question gave an interview to the Sunday Times about how he inspired the songs, which provoked a deserved backlash. 'It was pretty shit,' she says, quietly, conscious of widening the conversation to 'how often people – especially women – have their work or contributions overshadowed or claimed by others' in all fields, not just music.
Teasdale used to be a cynic about love, she explains, and says she had never been able to write a love song before – at least one that was 'lusting over a guy. Maybe that was something in my subconscious that was just … very gay,' she laughs. 'It just feels so much more empowering to write it about a non-man.' That sense of empowerment has also expanded into their image: Teasdale says she feels far less inclined to cover up these days.
How does Teasdale's love story fit in with what Chambers, who is in a long-term relationship with Mobaraki, has experienced over the past three years? 'The theme was pretty prevalent early on in Rhian's lyrics and it made me really happy to see my friend so happy and in love that she wrote about it,' Chambers says. She points out that she had never written a love song before this record, either, but has also broken that barrier, in a way. 'Don't Speak is a song I wrote as Josh, to me. Does that still count?'
The record opens with CPR, a stomping melodrama about falling deep and hard; Jennifer's Body, named after the cult horror film, is a declaration of obsessive love. 'The first time I watched it, I would have been a straight teenager and was just like: 'Oh, this is a cute film,'' says Teasdale. She has since picked up on its queer subtext. 'It's so funny. I've been with my partner for three years now and I'm still having these epiphanies, literally daily.'
There are odes to domesticity, too, such as the lovely, lilting Davina McCall. 'It's a really soppy love song. Me and my partner were watching Big Brother, and I know she isn't presenting the new one, but it made me think of watching Big Brother as a teenager, and how iconic she was, and that catchphrase: 'I'm coming to get you.'' It turns out that McCall was also an early fan of the band. 'When we were first starting to play shows, she tagged us in a post and she was at a show with a Wet Leg T-shirt on. We were all obviously super-stoked.'
Does McCall know she has a song named after her? 'No! I feel like I need to tell her. I feel like that would be the right thing to do.'
When I tell McCall, she sends an ecstatic video note about how much she loves the band and how sorry she was that a prior engagement meant she had to turn down their invitation to a secret show last week. 'Please invite me again,' she says, 'because you've made my life. Bearing in mind I'm a 57-year-old woman, I'm not their natural fan, but I think they are ace: really cool, love the lyrics, love the music, love the attitude. They're fucking amazing.'
It is strange to hear Teasdale talk about what excited them all first time around: being tagged by McCall, playing in Europe for the very first time. Given how much Wet Leg exceeded their own wildest expectations, are they having to reconsider what they want from the band? 'Going with the flow is part of the ambition,' says Teasdale. 'It's not: 'What accolades do we want? What slots do we want to have?' My ambitions, personally, are to just make something that I can look back on and be like: 'Oh, that was really fun to make, I'm happy with that.'' She adopts a silly voice. 'Taking it seriously, but not taking yourself too seriously,' she says, with a grimace. 'That classic chestnut.'
Having achieved world domination, they are about to find out what happens next. I ask Chambers if she is ready. 'We're heading back into the madness, ready or not,' she replies. 'This weird dream just keeps going. I'm down to clown.'
Moisturizer is released on 11 July on Domino