Chelsea Wolfe’s Gothic Heart

It was cloudy and drizzly when Chelsea Wolfe stepped onstage at the Cruel World festival in Pasadena, California, where the lineup was dominated by a brooding crowd of dark wave, dark pop, and postpunk sounds. For Wolfe—arriving in a long black dress, her stage fog blending with the natural mist—it was her first live performance […]

May 26, 2025 - 19:20

It was cloudy and drizzly when Chelsea Wolfe stepped onstage at the Cruel World festival in Pasadena, California, where the lineup was dominated by a brooding crowd of dark wave, dark pop, and postpunk sounds.

For Wolfe—arriving in a long black dress, her stage fog blending with the natural mist—it was her first live performance of 2025, after focusing part of this year on songwriting for her next album, which remains in the very early stages. It was also her first chance to perform her new collaboration with the noise-rock band HEALTH, the just-released single “Mean,” with that band’s singer Jake Duzsik.

More from Spin:

In what will likely be one of the few live performances of “Mean,” with its stuttering effects and heartbreak beat, Wolfe and Duzsik harmonized on the chorus: “Did you want to be mean … For no reason?/Did you take it out on me Cuz I’m in the room?/Did you want to be free … of the illusion/That life could be sweet and you could feel good?”

The downhearted Depeche Mode-ish performance had to land somewhere near a bullseye for much of the crowd in front of them, largely dressed in shades of black, some in leather and studs, fishnets, and pale complexions. One dude near the front of the stage had the words “People are poison” written on his black denim vest. When the song ended, Duzsik quickly slipped away with a quick wave goodbye.

“HEALTH is a band that’s kind of hard to define genre-wise, so I’ve always felt a kinship with them,” says Wolfe, in an interview following her 40-minute set. “We make dark music that has electronic elements and rock elements but with a softer voice. We’re both kind of on the outskirts of everything.

(Credit: Cruel World courtesy of Goldenvoice)

“I love how a band like Depeche Mode takes a 20-second moment in time in a relationship and blows it up to this cinematic piece of music,” she adds about the track. “I can’t speak for Jake, but for me, that was my aim with this song. The lyrics are kind of simplistic in a way. It’s like, ‘Did you want to be mean? Just ’cause I’m here?’—it’s this little moment in time, but it’s reflective of what’s going on in a whole relationship. It’s this little seed of an idea, examining any kind of relationship, romantic friendship, business, whatever it is.”

The song was created in Los Angeles with HEALTH during a single day together in the studio, rather than sharing music files remotely, which is increasingly the norm in collaborations. Wolfe has made music that way as well, but is now more inclined to get together when it’s time to create.

“I’m sure any musician will tell you that there’s just so much more magic to being in the same room, and things happen so much faster,” she said. “The ideas just immediately spark off of each other. It’s so much more fun and so much more fruitful. It was cool to do something with them. I feel like Jake and I both have strange voices and they go together in this interesting way.”

In her dressing room trailer, Wolfe was bundled up from the weather in a black trench coat, and every few minutes another friend would knock on her door to say hello. After this first day back onstage, she would be leaving within 24 hours for a tour of Australia and New Zealand through the end of May, only her third time touring there. She was still hoping to stick around Cruel World long enough to see the day’s performances by Nick Cave, Garbage, and New Order.

“I always love when I feel embraced by the goths,” she says of the festival. “I obviously have a very gothic heart, but I don’t fit the traditional sense of goth music.”

(Credit: NicolasSandinoMoreno) — (Credit: Nicolas Sandino Moreno)

Wolfe inhabits her own space, with elements of folk, rock, metal, industrial, electronic, and more, usually paired with a striking visual element reflecting a gothic, witchy flair. She is set for a fall tour of North America opening for the Norwegian dark folk band Wardruna, performing acoustic either solo or as a duo with main collaborator Ben Chisholm. She is still deciding on her approach, and says, “I’m always all over the place. I want to do rock and roll one second, and then I want to do acoustic the next second. I’m driving myself crazy.”

Regardless, on those dates Wolfe will continue to lean heavily on songs from her 2024 album She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She. That record, produced by Dave Sitek of TV On the Radio, was another forward step in an evolution of sound and conviction. It is also a chronicle of her choosing sobriety (the frantic “House of Self-Undoing”) while cutting loose parts of her life that are no longer welcome. The music was equal parts understated and explosive, noisy and melodic, with trance-like moments (“Tunnel Lights”) that echo classic trip-hop.

“It was me realizing like, I don’t have to live the same way I’ve always lived,” she explains of the album’s frequent theme. “I don’t have to keep all the relationships that I’ve always had, even if they’re bad for me. I can release some things, I can cut the cords. And that was very freeing. But this whole time that I’ve been releasing that music and playing that music, I’ve still kind of felt like I was in this phase of it trying to pull me back into the way life used to be.”

She imagines the follow-up to She Reaches Out may be “a little bit more definitive of taking that step forward, away from whatever it is I feel is truly not me anymore, or truly not right for me.”

To get there, Wolfe is breaking from her usual obsessive songwriting and demoing habits to collaborate with other artists. Each songwriting partner so far has brought different creative impulses to their sessions. For some, a song might be tossed off as a very rough demo in a single day, while others will continue tinkering on a piece for months.

“Different songs require different things, and I really want the songs to be as good as possible. So I don’t mind chipping away at them and spending time to make sure that they’re good or at least I think they’re good,” she says.

The last album counted ‘80s anime as a visual influence. On her new material, she’s been moved by the current anime series Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. “It’s a little bit like a Lord of the Rings-y fantasy journey, but it’s about human nature and I feel like the main character is very neurodivergent-coded and I resonate with that,” Wolfe adds. “I love this character. I always get inspired by some anime on every album. There’s so many of them that have such great storytelling and visuals.”

Her music has taken surprising turns. One project was the soundtrack to the 2022 horror film X, directed by Ti West. She was recruited by composer Tyler Bates, who used ethereal layers of Wolfe’s wordless vocals as an essential, if ominous, element in the soundtrack, setting a tone for the entire film. The movie and the soundtrack album close with Wolfe singing a foreboding cover of the 1918 love song “Oui Oui Marie.”

“Having actual assignments to do that and write for certain characters was great,” she says of the experience. “I found it easy to read the script and try to get into these characters’ heads and give them sounds. And Tyler wanted it to be very vocal based, which was great for me, because I love playing around with my voice.

“It got pretty intense. A lot of it was during COVID time, so I was just alone—and you’re watching these very stabby scenes and coming up with these growls and weird sounds. I find when I do stuff like that, I have to sort of ground [myself] after it because I get a little shaky. It was coming from a deep place.”

The X soundtrack was a meaningful side-trip from her own records, which began with her 2010 debut, The Grime and the Glow. And as she works toward what will become her eighth album, her mind remains open and hungry for other ideas and influences, wherever they lead.

“It’s so cool to look back at my music,” she says of her past work. “I feel like it’s listening to a completely different person.”

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.