Lollapalooza Band to Watch: Wet
Joe Valle, Kelly Zutrau, and Marty Sulkow make up the Brooklyn-based band, Wet. (Photo: Instagram)
The Brooklyn-based trio, Wet, is one band you need to start listening to immediately (and you can, because their self titled EP and recent single “Deadwater” are available to download on iTunes). Lead singer Kelly Zutrau describes their sound as direct, emotional, and minimal, but it’s her haunting vocals that will have you hooked after only a few seconds.
The band, comprised of Zutrau, Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle, met while they were attending college in New York — Zutrau at Cooper Union and Sulkow and Valle at NYU. “We met through friends and started hanging out,” says Zutrau. “We had our varying interests in music and started playing together very casually. Slowly, as time went on, we kept passing demos around and at a certain point it changed over and became something we were taking more seriously.”
The band released a few demos on the internet that garnered the attention of major labels and they signed with Columbia Records. Their full length album will come out at the end of the year, but until then they’ll be playing the new tracks live at their shows. At their set on Saturday at Lollapalooza, fans were swaying along, fully enjoying the new sounds. Wet will focus on touring well into the fall, working to get their music heard by as many ears as possible. “In the beginning, you have to put that work in and hopefully it pays off some day,” says Zutrau of life on the road. “But it’s not glamorous at all.”
Since putting out their first EP of breakup songs in 2013, Zutrau has become a bit of a style icon, admired for her simple, minimal wardrobe — one that she often coordinates with her band mates so they can have a monochromatic look on stage. “Style is not something I think of as a strong point of mine,” she says. “Now that we are on stage and doing photographs, it’s really something we have to consider and take seriously. We like to keep it simple and clean and let the music do the work and not let the clothes be a distraction from what our serious work is.”
Right now, the band is looking up to artists like Florence Welch, Beyoncé, and Rihanna, who they admire for their unique and long-lasting careers. “There are a few acts who have careers that have spanned a long time,” says Valle. “[They] have been able to stay relevant to what is happening and not in way that is about following.” With their career trajectory already bound for greatness, we think Wet will be around for a long time.
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