Wren & Wilde play music they call smoke folk. I’m not even going to explain it, you’ll just have to listen to the upcoming album, Serial Dreamers. Or go check their album release show on October 7 at the Icehouse in Minneapolis.
Please tell us about Wren & Wilde.
We formed Wren + Wilde in 2023, but my husband (and drummer) Corey and I have been making music together for nearly 20 years now. We met in music school in Tennessee and formed a folk duo called The Passerine. We put out a couple of EPs and toured regionally before eventually settling here in Minnesota. Then we took a long break from releasing music to raise our family—over a decade, in fact.
When we finally emerged from the trenches of babyhood and toddlerdom, we felt the itch to start a fresh project, this time with a fuller, grittier sound than our previous endeavors. So we pulled together a few of our favorite players—and long-time friends—Bethany Olivares (vocals), Mitch Jones (bass), and André Desautel (guitar) to help us build out the sound. Sonically, I like to call what we do “smoke folk”—a little Southern gothic, a little vintage country, a little Laurel Canyon rock, with heartfelt harmonies and a gritty flavor of Americana running through it.
Your debut album, Serial Dreamers, sounds beautiful. There’s an unmistakable folk sound, yet starting with Gitchi Gami, there’s an ethereal, almost ghostly sound that befits that feel of Northeast Minnesota where everything feels ancient and forever. Then ironically to me, Serial Dreamers, sounds more grounded with a more definite sound and talk of the tide coming in. It makes me wonder if you set out to create an album with an arc or theme or does something organically emerge while you were working on it?
That’s such a beautiful observation! I love that “Gitchi Gami” feels almost ancient and otherworldly because that’s exactly how Lake Superior feels to me. It’s enormous and mysterious and somehow makes you feel very small and very connected to everything at the same time.
I didn’t set out to create an album with a specific arc when I started writing these songs. In fact, some of them were written years apart and came from very different seasons of my life. But once I began putting the record together, I found threads connecting the songs and conversations happening between them—longing and belonging, motherhood and our child selves, restlessness and learning to slow down, and the tension between heartbreak and hope. The arc emerged organically as we listened back and started sequencing the tracks.
Ultimately, the album revealed itself to be about resilience. I really wanted it to land somewhere more settled and hopeful—even if that hope is a little bittersweet. After all the wandering, longing, heartbreak, and dreaming, “Serial Dreamers” became our landing place.
What was the inspiration for Luella? Every girl should know that song by heart. It’s so empowering.
Oh gosh thank you… this is such a special song for me. Luella was written for my eldest daughter. She’s a tender-hearted, old soul of a girl – more interested in nature and meditating than Barbies or sports. Her hobbies include rock collecting, sewing and cats. She’s pretty stinkin amazing…. I can’t help but see a lot of myself in her (I was painfully shy and timid as a kiddo). And though I try real hard not to project my own childhood trauma on her, my mama heart still worries for her. Because the world can be cruel and leaves little room to be different…
More than anything, I want my girlie to know her worth – to know that the particular way she shines is significant, and that the world needs her to be exactly who she is. My hope is that “Luella” would assure other tender hearts of their worth and encourage them to take up space—to let themselves be fully who they are. And maybe, in writing it for her, I was offering a little of that same encouragement to my own heart, too: the words my own child self needed to hear all those years ago.
Wool Suit is such a clever song, and I really love the refined sinister sound. Which came first in the creation, the lyrics, the sound or the idea?
The idea certainly came first. I’ve always loved the imagery of fairy tales, especially the darker versions hiding underneath the stories we tell children. “Wool Suit” started with the idea of the wolf in sheep’s clothing, playing off the imagery of Little Red Riding Hood to describe a predatory relationship.
From there, the lyrics came together around that metaphor—the charming, polished exterior that can disguise something much more sinister underneath. I wanted the song to feel a little dangerous without being too heavy-handed, so the production followed the story. This was a last-minute addition to the record, so much of the instrumentation was created on the fly in the studio. We opted for a stomp-clap feel that gives it a bit of a Southern gothic vibe, which I think makes the darker elements hit a little harder.
Big props to our producer, Christopher Furst, who helped us dress the song up and bring that whole world to life.
Please tell us about the album release show.
Serial Dreamers will be out October 7, and we’ll be celebrating that very night at Icehouse in Minneapolis with a very special release show. We’ll be bringing the full band, along with all the musicians who contributed to the record, so it’s going to be a pretty epic 10-piece version of Wren + Wilde. And we’re thrilled to have Haley E. Rydell Trio opening the evening with her gorgeous tunes.
Doors open at 6 and the show starts at 8, so there’s plenty of time to come early, grab dinner and a craft cocktail, and settle in for the evening. You can snatch up your tickets here.
This record has been a long time coming and feels like a culmination of a long chapter—not just because it’s our debut full-length, but because it represents finding my way back to songwriting after more than a decade away. I’m really looking forward to celebrating it with the people who have supported us along the way and finally letting these songs out into the world.
Mostly Minnesota 