Chelsea Wolfe
Biography
Chelsea Wolfe is an American singer-songwriter and musician from Northern California. Her music brings together gothic folk, doom metal and electronic elements, with arrangements that range from acoustic guitar and voice to heavily distorted instrumentation.
Wolfe grew up outside Sacramento, where her father played in a country band and maintained a home recording studio. She began experimenting with songwriting and recording as a child. During a European tour in 2009, she played in galleries and factories, exploring electric guitar, effects and the acoustics of unfamiliar spaces. She later credited those performances with helping her understand what she wanted to do with her voice. Returning home, she recorded The Grime and the Glow (2010) on an eight-track recorder. For Apokalypsis (2011), she assembled a band and moved into a studio.
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Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs (2012) brought her voice and acoustic arrangements into closer focus. She then worked more extensively with electronics on Pain Is Beauty (2013), followed by the heavier guitars of Abyss (2015) and Hiss Spun (2017). After years of touring, Wolfe recorded Birth of Violence (2019) at her home in Northern California. Working with longtime collaborator Ben Chisholm, she built the record around songs that could stand on acoustic guitar and voice alone.
Collaboration has also been a recurring part of Wolfe’s work. Her guest recordings include “Memorial” with Russian Circles (2013), “Funeral” with Myrkur (2017), and “Night People” with Deafheaven (2018). She and drummer and multi-instrumentalist Jess Gowrie formed Mrs. Piss, releasing Self-Surgery in 2020. Wolfe and Chisholm subsequently joined Converge and Stephen Brodsky for Bloodmoon: I (2021). With Tyler Bates and Chisholm, she also composed the soundtrack to Ti West’s horror film X (2022).
On She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, released by Loma Vista Recordings on February 9, 2024, Wolfe returned to electronic production, combining processed guitars, synthesizers and trip-hop rhythms. Dave Sitek produced the album, with mixing by Shawn Everett. Its themes of change and recovery accompanied Wolfe’s experience of becoming sober in 2021. Two companion EPs followed that year: Undone, which reworked the songs through remixes, and Unbound, which presented stripped-down performances alongside a cover of Spiritbox’s “Cellar Door.”
The Dark, made with producer Jennifer Decilveo, was released through Loma Vista Recordings on August 21, 2026.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.