Wet Leg – the Isle of Wight five-piece founded by Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers – have announced their eagerly anticipated second album moisturizer will be released on 11th July. Joined by Ellis Durand (bass), Henry Holmes (drums), and Joshua Mobaraki (guitar, synth), moisturizer is fun and freaky and fabulous, an unbridled display of the live muscle Wet Leg have built up over a few years of non-stop touring. Punchier, prettier and more perverted where it counts, moisturizer is an album of manic love songs and well-timed kiss-offs, delivered by a clan of the UK’s most beloved oddballs.
Wet Leg
Touring all over the world, Wet Leg developed into a taut, caustic live operation that made good on their debut album’s success: No.1 chart placements at home and abroad, three GRAMMY® Awards, two Brits and over half a billion streams. If success presents a fork in the road for any new band – to “go pop” or keep following your muse – Wet Leg emphatically chose the latter path – including working with Dan Carey again as their producer. In March 2024, the band decamped to Southwold to write; living together, working all day, watching horror movies all night, they soon locked into a new sense of symbiosis. Subsequently, all five members of Wet Leg have writing credits on moisturizer – “We were just kind of having fun and exploring,” says Chambers. “We focussed on: Is this going to be fun to play live? It was very natural that we would write the second record together” adds Teasdale.
Alongside the album announcement, the band also share the first taste of moisturizer with its frenetic, alluringly combative lead single “catch these fists.” Kicking things off with an untameable, electrified groove from its opening seconds, “catch these fists” is dance-punk par excellence – bass notes ricocheting off a wall of howling synth, thunderous beats catching strays from Teasdale’s cruel deadpan.
The video, directed by the band and shot on the Island, nods to Ti West, Cameron Crowe and their own Wet Dream video and is a suitably off-kilter introduction to moisturizer valley. Check it out below:
As happens a couple of times on moisturizer, the major animus behind “catch these fists” was an interaction with a belligerent man, as chronicled in the song’s final verse. This is not to say sh*tc*nt men are the sole focus of moisturizer — no matter how much album track mangetout, with its withering chorus of “get lost forever” may feel like the Nicole Kidman divorce photo in song form. On the contrary, this largely is an album about being, as the band exclaim on pond song, so “DEEP! IN! LOVE!!!!” moisturizer contains love songs of every stripe: stressed-out, gooey-eyed, gratuitously horny, blissed out, obsessive and mysterious.
Wet Leg
Although Teasdale previously felt allergic to writing love songs, moisturizer is defined by its sheer exuberance and Teasdale ended up finding the process empowering. That new sense of ownership extends to moisturizer’s album art, an instant-classic freak-fest in which Chambers and Teasdale bare long, ghoulish claws; Teasdale, sporting long, kitschy socks and sans eyebrows, grins fiendishly into the camera. It reflects the album, moisturizer is the band turning the dial up and delivering a record that is unapologetically bolder, stronger and raunchier.
Upcoming UK Live Dates
MAY
21st – O2 Academy, Birmingham
23rd – O2 Academy Brixton, London
27th – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
28th – O2 Academy, Leeds
29th – O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester
JUNE
27th – Glastonbury Festival, Shepton Mallet
JULY
11th – TRNSMT, Glasgow
AUGUST
1st – All Together Now, Waterford
3rd – Wilderness Festival, Oxfordshire
10th – Boardmasters Festival, Newquay
15th – Green Man Festival, Crickhowell
Wet Leg
Tickets for the band’s May 2025 UK headline tour will be on pre-sale from Wed 9th April at 10:00am local time, general sale from Fri 11th April at 10:00am local time. Pre-order the new album for access to the first pre-sale.
Share Thing