Wet Leg: 2025

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

Some singles are meant to follow bands forever — and there's no doubt that Wet Leg's Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers will always look with fondness upon their 2021 breakthrough missile, "Chaise Longue," with its warm beer, buttered muffin wink, and ferocious insouciance. The Isle of Wight friends made a cannonball splash with their eponymous 2022 debut album, sauntering off with Grammys, Brit Awards and sold-out tours — a years-in-the-making "overnight" success that at times caught them off guard.

Wet Leg's lovestruck, lusty Moisturizer, the band's second album, is a fresh start in some ways — the duo of Teasdale and Chambers has officially expanded to a quintet, recruiting their longtime Isle of Wight friends and touring companions: guitarist Josh Mobaraki (Chambers' partner), bassist Ellis Durand, and drummer Henry Holmes. Working again with producer Dan Carey, the group swapped and shared songwriting credits, with Teasdale's voice, lacerating lyrical wit, and frontwoman charisma stepping more to the fore. 

In an "FUV Live" chat with Teasdale over Zoom — she was in Leeds, on Wet Leg's tour bus in the midst of the band's spring UK tour — the singer and songwriter discussed how the expanded Wet Leg strengthened Moisturizer, the band's discoveries since their debut album, and the "safe space" of the stage. She touched on the frustrations and vagaries of the male-dominated music industry and the world, when even attending a Chappell Roan concert can be challenging. Happily, Teasdale is buoyed by her own newish relationship, and Moisturizer reflects that romance — body, soul, and nagging doubts — brilliantly laid down on the heated "CPR."

While there are definitely jabs at annoying guys and the aggressive male gaze ("Catch These Fists"), there are also strikingly tender songs on Moisturizer, including Teasdale's album closing "U and Me at Home," Chambers' "Don't Speak" (lovingly written from Mobaraki's perspective), and "Pokemon" — and Teasdale and I chatted about that love-focused feel of the new album.

Team Wet Leg also sent along three live songs for this FUV Live session, recorded in April at the Village Studios in Los Angeles: "Catch These Fists," "CPR," and a slightly cleaned-up "Mangetout" (enjoy the full cussy version on Wet Leg's album).

[Interview recorded 5/28/25; all three songs recorded at the Village Studios in Los Angeles on 4/10/25 and engineered by Alisse Laymac, Claudia Iatalese, and Nicole Schmidt and mixed by Caesar Edmunds. Produced by Meghan Suma.]