If Not Winter is the debut studio album by the American musician Wisp, released on August 1, 2025 through Music Soup and Interscope Records. She collaborated with multiple record producers including Stint, Aldn, Julian Emken, Photographic Memory, Kraus, Grayskies and Elliott Kozel, and started worked on new material in 2024.
If Not Winter is a shoegaze album with elements of nu gaze that explores love, loss, self-doubt, vulnerability, grief, and personal growth. The album was promoted by the singles "Sword", "Get Back to Me", "Save Me Now", and "Breathe Onto Me". Wisp is scheduled to embark on a headlining tour of North America and Europe in support of the album from August to November 2025, crossing over with a tour supporting System of a Down.
Background and recording
She would release her single "Your Face" in April 2023, which would start to gain traction online,[1][2] on platforms such as TikTok, leading to her signing with Interscope Records.[3] In April 2024, Natalie Lu a.k.a. Wisp released her debut extended play (EP) Pandora. Following a tour in support of the EP in April and May 2024, she began working on her debut album.[2] By January 2025, she was still in the early stages of writing and recording.[4][5] The album was named in reference to the Sappho poetry collection If Not, Winter (2002).[6]If Not Winter would be promoted by the singles "Sword",[7][8] "Get Back to Me",[7] "Save Me Now",[7] and "Breathe Onto Me".[7]
Whilst working on If Not Winter, Wisp drew influence from the Cocteau Twins album The Moon and the Melodies (1986),[9]Chappell Roan,[5]Whirr and Slowdive.[6][10] She aimed to make it a cohesive and story driven album with greater pop and electronic music influences that would move her past the shoegaze label earned early in her career, which she now found "limiting".[4][9] Wisp described If Not Winter as her "diary" full of entries of her childhood dreams,[7] feeling that it was full of "limerence, nostalgia, infatuation to the highest levels".[7] The album also explores emotional themes.[1]
Composition
Kieran Press-Reynolds held felt that the journey "begins from the cresting of grunge-gaze volcanoes on 'Sword' and 'Breathe onto me,' to the fading of daylight to dusk on tracks “After dark” and “Guide light.”[11] According to Reynolds, "Breathe onto me has a gale-force tempest that makes the music feel "electrifying".[11] Reynolds had also felt that the witchy synths flooding over track 'Guide light' feel "cribbed from Elusin’s 'Highway,' another surprise TikTok smash from an act with an enchanted-forest aesthetic. The "crystalline static" that opens “Mesmerized” hints at My Bloody Valentine’s wonky feedback sampling.”[11] Reynolds considered that 'Get back to me” could be compared to a microwaved Cocteau Twins instrumental; the barely audible susurrations on “Save me now' and the "fluttering hook" on “Breathe onto me” hit perfectly—but fizzle out quick.[11]
Release and promotion
In an interview with Paper, she said the album was intended for release in July 2025.[12] Wisp released "Sword" as the lead single from If Not Winter,[13] on March 14, 2025. On April 13, 2025, Wisp had debuted "Get Back to Me" and an untitled song live at Coachella,[12] with the former releasing as the album's second single on April 18. Later, on June 6, 2025, "Save Me Now" was released as the third single.[14] On June 24, 2025, Wisp announced If Not Winter had been completed after a year in production,[15] alongside an acoustic video of her performance of "Serpentine" at La Blogothèque in Paris, France.[15] "Breathe Onto Me" was released as the album's fourth single on July 18, 2025.[16] "Serpentine" was released as the album's fifth and final single on July 29, 2025.
The album released on August 1; a visualizer for "Save Me Now" was released concurrently.[17] Wisp has embarked on a headlining tour of North America and Europe in support of If Not Winter between August 22 and November 2, 2025.[7][18] Presales for the tour were made available June 26 at 10AM PST, and could be granted through Wisp's website.[18] In between the tour, she supported System of a Down between August 22 and September 3.[18]
Editors at AnyDecentMusic? rate this release an 7.2 out of 10, based on 7 scores.[19]According to the review aggregator Metacritic, If Not Winter received "generally favorable reviews" based on a weighted average score of 75 out of 100 from 7 critic scores.[20]
Robbin Murray writing for Clash would give it a score of 8 out of 10, commenting that it was "neatly cohesive."[1] Kieran Press-Reynolds of Pitchfork rated the album an 5.8 out of 10, criticizing the lack of uniqueness, writing "a full-length debut that’s beautiful on the surface but uninterested in challenging the genre’s priors, [...] tries to sculpt a world out of her ASMR-meets-arena-rock odysseys."[11] While Paste's Olivia Abercrombie would give the album a 7.3, saying the album is "a surprising first record, packed with her distinctive, beloved heavy distortion, but now featuring some poppier influences and unique genre blending."[24] Kristen S. Hé writing for NME would rate the album a 4 out of 5 stars, exclaiming that it "sheds the mystique, revealing her strongest songwriting yet".[23] Matt Young writing for The Line of Best Fit would comment that it "arrives at the height of summer like a shimmering shoegaze fantasia, something aching, bred from restless longing and mythic yearning."[25]
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