Alexa Wildish
Colorado singer-songwriter Alexa Wildish grew up in a musical family in the horse country of Southern California, where her father collected vintage guitars and she studied classical voice from age seven. Wildish spent her school years in musical theatre, but at age 17, an entirely different musical spark was ignited when she saw The Wailin’ Jennys open for Nickel Creek, and she took the hard-left turn from musical theatre to Americana. She had been on her way to Broadway, but the lure of performing original material was strong; she threw herself into songwriting, learned guitar and octave mandolin, and never looked back.
Wildish released her self-titled debut EP in 2020, staking her claim as one of Americana’s most compelling new voices and making it easy to see why she took home first place at Planet Bluegrass’s emerging singer-songwriter competition in 2019. Co-produced by Dan Knobler and Russell Durham, Alexa Wildish also features vocals by Wailin’ Jennys singer Ruth Moody, the guitar playing of Hawktail’s Jordan Tice, Miranda Lambert’s keys player Danny Mitchell, and pedal steel by Midland’s Philip Sterk. With a pristine voice likened to Alison Krauss and Eva Cassidy, Wildish’s lyric “I'll be your refuge, a place you can go,” aptly describes the rich and mystical soundscapes she so deftly inhabits on her freshman effort.
Wildish’s latest EP After Love comes after her celebrated run as a contestant on NBC’s The Voice in 2023 and is the singer-songwriter’s ambitious submission to the cover record canon. Continuing to build out the modern folk sound of her self-titled debut, Wildish re-enlists Durham to produce After Love. The first single, “everything i wanted,” originally by Billie Eilish, is a heavily requested cover from Wildish’s time on The Voice. In it, she subtly remakes a modern pop hit into an ethereal folk-tinged dreamscape. Wildish goes on to boldly cover Tom Petty’s ode to autonomy, “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” one of the tracks from 1994’s Wildflowers, with a raw rock edge that exudes a powerful new side of her artistry. Her love for country music runs deep on Sonny Curtis and Ron Hellard’s “I’m No Stranger to the Rain,” which Keith Whitley cut in 1989 and endures as a trenchant touchstone of country. Add in Wildish's takes on Cher’s “Believe,” Brandi Carlile’s “This Time Tomorrow” featuring fellow The Voice alum Lennon VanderDoes, and “Songbird” by Fleetwood Mac, and you have a snapshot of a sensibility that takes in a vast swath of American music.
Whether singing her original music or a cover, Wildish knows how to tend to the heart of a song and propagate it with a fierce veracity not many vocalists can achieve. After Love is a gem of a cover record--one which takes songs we've heard a thousand times and suffuses them with new and kaleidoscopic colors, holding them up to the light and turning them until a different pattern locks into place. This up-and-coming folk songstress’s cover project is both lush and disciplined, performed with the sensitivity of a poet and the vocal control of a true technician. It’s an ode to the art of crafting a cover song with staying power, and Wildish proves more than up to the task.