Wishy Paradise on Planet Popstar LP

On the heels of their breakthrough 2024 debut album, Wishy returns with a new compilation LP titled Paradise on Planet Popstar. The 11 track LP features their 2023 EP Paradise on side A and a brand new, six-song EP titled Planet Popstar on the B side. A dreamy and pop-forward compilation of b-side tracks, the new EP was recorded in the same sessions that birthed Triple Seven, the band's widely acclaimed debut ("one of the best indie rock debuts in recent memory" says Stereogum). A critical success, Triple Seven recently landed on "best of the year" lists from The New York Times, GQ, Alt Press, Paste, Stereogum, Uproxx, NME, and more.

Named for the glowing, five pointed star that the iconic bubblegum-pink Nintendo character Kirby hails from, Wishy's latest offering, Planet Popstar, is a bite-sized antidote to the anxiety and precarity of life in the 2020s. A sun-soaked, hazy reflection on the band's central themes—love, life, self-discovery and having fun—it's a compilation of tracks that shows another side of the band's kaleidoscopic sound. Following the enthusiastic reception and critical acclaim of the last year, a buzzy US headline tour, and looking ahead at an already packed-full 2025, the band decided not to leave the remaining songs from the Triple Seven sessions on the cutting room floor.

Bolstered by the rare musical synergy between Indiana songwriters Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites, Planet Popstar completes a loose web of vignettes and snapshots capturing them in a whirlwind couple of years — exiting the pandemic, embarking on an embryonic project, making sense of their musical pasts while forging a musical future alongside one another, each of them on a journey of self-acceptance and self-understanding.

['Over and Over'] is a buoyant fever dream of indie-pop nostalgia plucked straight out of the aughts. The guitar is an instant earworm, anchored throughout the track by Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites' near weightless vocals. Meanwhile, the snare heavy rhythms and steady, flowing groove brings to mind (or my mind, at least) the effortless cool of early Yo La Tengo. Since Mana, Wishy have matured at an amazing rate. They're still pulling on the same threads of longing and self-reflection and gazing down at the same guitar pedals, but the music is different—arriving both more refined and intentional in every foggy lyric and fuzzy riff.