Wishy lands on U-Rock® Band Radar from Indianapolis

Wishy Bring Indianapolis Indie Rock Home on Nature's Pill

Indianapolis has a homegrown indie-rock band heading into its second full-length with considerably more road behind it than when the first one arrived.

Wishy will release Nature's Pill on October 2 through Winspear, continuing a remarkably quick run of records that began with the Mana and Paradise EPs in 2023, followed by debut album Triple Seven in 2024 and the Planet Popstar EP in 2025.

But Nature's Pill isn't simply the next release in that sequence.

It's the sound of a young Indianapolis band coming back from the road and making a record differently because of what happened there.

From Indianapolis to Wishy

Wishy's roots go back to Indianapolis, where Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites first met in high school.

Years and other musical projects eventually brought the two back together as Wishy, with Dimitri Morris on guitar, Mitch Collins on bass and Conner Host on drums completing the five-piece.

Krauter and Pitchkites serve as the band's principal vocalists and songwriters, but one of the important changes on Nature's Pill is that the writing became more collaborative.

Where the songs on Triple Seven had largely been written separately, Krauter and Pitchkites began writing together as well as individually for the new album. Morris and Collins also contributed to the writing process.

That's an important progression for a group whose identity is increasingly being shaped by five musicians playing together rather than simply assembling songs around individual writers.

Taking the Live Band Into the Studio

Wishy reunited with Triple Seven co-producer Ben Lumsdaine for the new record, this time working in Los Angeles.

There, the five musicians packed into a small studio and recorded roughly half of the album live in the room.

That decision came after extensive touring — and it allowed some of the chemistry developed onstage to become part of the recording itself.

The musical vocabulary has expanded as well.

The '90s dream-pop and alternative-rock elements heard on Triple Seven remain, but Wishy says the new material reaches further into '80s college rock and 2000s indie while retaining the melodic immediacy that has become central to the band's sound.

Life Gets Messy on Nature's Pill

The 12-song record doesn't try to pretend life becomes easier as a band gains momentum.

Instead, Wishy works through romantic frustration, breakups, desire, loneliness and the general absurdity of trying to understand relationships and yourself while everything keeps moving.

The band doesn't approach those subjects as straight autobiography. Krauter has described the writing as deliberately embellished and sometimes hypothetical, while Pitchkites jokingly calls the approach “historical fiction.”

That leaves Wishy room to make melancholy colorful rather than oppressive.

Across songs including “All The Rage,” “Covergirl,” “Sensational,” “Lovesick” and “Mona Lisa,” distorted guitars, dream-pop textures and large melodic hooks carry material that could easily have become much darker in somebody else's hands.

Nature's Pill Track List

1. “All The Rage”
2. “Covergirl”
3. “Sensational”
4. “Shift”
5. “You're Not Serious”
6. “Mona Lisa”
7. “Lovesick”
8. “Freak 99”
9. “Headscratcher”
10. “Blitz”
11. “Kiss Kiss Kiss”
12. “Party World”

An Indianapolis Band Moving Outward

For WIND-DB, there's another reason to pay attention to Wishy.

This isn't a national touring act passing through Indianapolis with a local connection manufactured for the headline. This band started here.

Krauter and Pitchkites met here. Wishy formed from relationships rooted here. Indianapolis remains part of the band's identity even as its audience expands well beyond Indiana.

That's precisely the kind of progression a local music station should follow — not only discovering bands when they're playing the smallest room in town, but continuing to cover them as the rooms, tours and records get bigger.

Wishy now has several years of releases behind it, substantial touring experience and a second full-length ready to leave Indianapolis for a much larger audience.

But the line still leads home.

Nature's Pill arrives October 2, 2026 through Winspear.