‘I Know Exactly Who I Am’: Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman on ‘Bleeds’ and Why ‘There’s No Such Thing as Selling Out Anymore’
On “Bleeds,” the blistering new album from rock band Wednesday, Karly Hartzman sings about false teeth, Four Lokos, fruit flies and other oddities from her daily life in Asheville, N.C. But a favorite, tongue-twisting lyric about “a pitbull puppy pissing off a balcony” was actually an observation from the frontwoman’s mom.
“She’s a social worker, and she was in kind of a shitty neighborhood and saw that happen,” Hartzman says. “I don’t know if the family was at work and they just left the dog on the balcony or something. But my mom was like, ‘This seems like a fucked-up kind of thing you’d be into writing.’”
On “Bleeds,” Hartzman weaves together vivid stories from her teenage years and mythologizes the characters in her neighborhood. The album contains some of the band’s best tracks yet and builds on the combustive power of 2023’s “Rat Saw God,” which launched Wednesday into indie music stardom. In fact, Hartzman describes “Bleeds” as “what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like.”
That’s partly because, after years of living in lo-fi and recording on a four-track machine, the band can now open the doors to prestigious studios with top-dollar equipment (alongside producer Alex Farrar). But it’s also indicative of where Hartzman sees herself as a person and artist. “My identity is very intact, and I think the music really shows that,” she says. “I know exactly who I am.”
Wednesday’s sound is a rollicking meld of alternative country and noise rock. On the album, the distorted guitar feedback and heavy riffs of “Wound Up Here” segue directly into the timeless country splendor of “Elderberry Wine.” “Gary’s II” is a shuffling folktale about Hartzman’s former landlord, and she wrote the 86-second screamo sprint “Wasp” for the sole purpose of crafting a new, explosive setlist ender.
Not everyone can wrap their head around the interaction between distortion and twang. “We played a festival in Portland and this drunk guy came up to me and said, ‘My one piece of advice for you is make a different band for your noisy stuff and your country stuff,’” Hartzman recalls. “And I was like, ‘Please shut up. I don’t know who the fuck you think you are.’ It actually angered me!”
Of course, Wednesday’s unique sound stems from Hartzman’s sweet-and-sour vocals, but it’s also largely thanks to Xandy Chelmis, who anchors the band with a distorted lap steel that rains acid tears. (On “Bleeds,” his work is most evident on “Townies,” in which a razor-sharp riff crusts over Hartzman’s voice-cracking melody.)
Hartzman first met Chelmis not long after she got together with Jake “MJ” Lenderman, with whom she’d go on to form a musical (and romantic) partnership. Lenderman became a member of Wednesday, and Hartzman often played in Lenderman’s band. They switched off releasing projects that dominated the indie music zeitgeist and were crowned the king and queen of a certain 2020s subgenre.
In 2024, the two broke up while on tour in Tokyo, shortly before hunkering down in the studio to record “Bleeds.” They decided not to tell the rest of the band, pretending that nothing had changed.
“We were trying to go with whatever would make the least amount of impact, because I didn’t need a distraction,” Hartzman says. She also didn’t want to distract her bandmates, or cause them to worry about what the split meant for the future of Wednesday. “I didn’t want them to think the band might be over because me and Jake are breaking up. I want to show them we can work together and we’ll be communicative.”
Even though “Bleeds” was written before the breakup, there are traces of a strained relationship in Hartzman’s lyrics. “I know it’s not easy / And I know it can’t always be, and that’s the way love goes,” she sings midway through the album.
While Lenderman will no longer be a touring member of Wednesday, Hartzman says “he knows he’s welcome” in the recording studio. “We’re just going to take it as it comes,” she says of the future of their creative partnership. “We’ll see what Jake feels up to. We love collaborating with him, but if he, for some reason, doesn’t have the bandwidth, I would understand that. We’ll just keep talking. Whatever each other needs, we’ll be happy to do for each other.”
As Hartzman and co. continue to grow from hometown heroes to a world-touring rock band, the singer is cognizant about protecting the DIY spirit at the center of Wednesday. There are lines Hartzman would never cross, like for example a partnership with a “huge corporation” or licensing her music for a prescription drug commercial. As she observes other bands like Massive Attack and Xiu Xiu abandoning Spotify for a variety of reasons, including Daniel Ek’s investment in military AI technology, she wonders if leaving streaming behind is viable for a band on the rise.
“We’re really fucking disappointed with streaming and AI and that kind of shit,” Hartzman says. “If we took our music off now, it would kind of defeat the purpose, because we’re trying to advocate for getting paid. If there’s a huge, needle-moving musician that makes the switch, I’m not afraid to fucking bandwagon on it. I don’t think I need to be the spokesperson for it.”
Still, when considering what DIY means in 2025, Hartzman says, “There’s no such thing as selling out anymore, because artists are having to try so much to survive. I think people get that.”
“It’s good to have a little money so you can contribute that back into your circle,” she adds. “If you get success, you take other people up with you and raise up your community.”
“She’s a social worker, and she was in kind of a shitty neighborhood and saw that happen,” Hartzman says. “I don’t know if the family was at work and they just left the dog on the balcony or something. But my mom was like, ‘This seems like a fucked-up kind of thing you’d be into writing.’”
On “Bleeds,” Hartzman weaves together vivid stories from her teenage years and mythologizes the characters in her neighborhood. The album contains some of the band’s best tracks yet and builds on the combustive power of 2023’s “Rat Saw God,” which launched Wednesday into indie music stardom. In fact, Hartzman describes “Bleeds” as “what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like.”
That’s partly because, after years of living in lo-fi and recording on a four-track machine, the band can now open the doors to prestigious studios with top-dollar equipment (alongside producer Alex Farrar). But it’s also indicative of where Hartzman sees herself as a person and artist. “My identity is very intact, and I think the music really shows that,” she says. “I know exactly who I am.”
Wednesday’s sound is a rollicking meld of alternative country and noise rock. On the album, the distorted guitar feedback and heavy riffs of “Wound Up Here” segue directly into the timeless country splendor of “Elderberry Wine.” “Gary’s II” is a shuffling folktale about Hartzman’s former landlord, and she wrote the 86-second screamo sprint “Wasp” for the sole purpose of crafting a new, explosive setlist ender.
Not everyone can wrap their head around the interaction between distortion and twang. “We played a festival in Portland and this drunk guy came up to me and said, ‘My one piece of advice for you is make a different band for your noisy stuff and your country stuff,’” Hartzman recalls. “And I was like, ‘Please shut up. I don’t know who the fuck you think you are.’ It actually angered me!”
Of course, Wednesday’s unique sound stems from Hartzman’s sweet-and-sour vocals, but it’s also largely thanks to Xandy Chelmis, who anchors the band with a distorted lap steel that rains acid tears. (On “Bleeds,” his work is most evident on “Townies,” in which a razor-sharp riff crusts over Hartzman’s voice-cracking melody.)
Hartzman first met Chelmis not long after she got together with Jake “MJ” Lenderman, with whom she’d go on to form a musical (and romantic) partnership. Lenderman became a member of Wednesday, and Hartzman often played in Lenderman’s band. They switched off releasing projects that dominated the indie music zeitgeist and were crowned the king and queen of a certain 2020s subgenre.
In 2024, the two broke up while on tour in Tokyo, shortly before hunkering down in the studio to record “Bleeds.” They decided not to tell the rest of the band, pretending that nothing had changed.
“We were trying to go with whatever would make the least amount of impact, because I didn’t need a distraction,” Hartzman says. She also didn’t want to distract her bandmates, or cause them to worry about what the split meant for the future of Wednesday. “I didn’t want them to think the band might be over because me and Jake are breaking up. I want to show them we can work together and we’ll be communicative.”
Even though “Bleeds” was written before the breakup, there are traces of a strained relationship in Hartzman’s lyrics. “I know it’s not easy / And I know it can’t always be, and that’s the way love goes,” she sings midway through the album.
While Lenderman will no longer be a touring member of Wednesday, Hartzman says “he knows he’s welcome” in the recording studio. “We’re just going to take it as it comes,” she says of the future of their creative partnership. “We’ll see what Jake feels up to. We love collaborating with him, but if he, for some reason, doesn’t have the bandwidth, I would understand that. We’ll just keep talking. Whatever each other needs, we’ll be happy to do for each other.”
As Hartzman and co. continue to grow from hometown heroes to a world-touring rock band, the singer is cognizant about protecting the DIY spirit at the center of Wednesday. There are lines Hartzman would never cross, like for example a partnership with a “huge corporation” or licensing her music for a prescription drug commercial. As she observes other bands like Massive Attack and Xiu Xiu abandoning Spotify for a variety of reasons, including Daniel Ek’s investment in military AI technology, she wonders if leaving streaming behind is viable for a band on the rise.
“We’re really fucking disappointed with streaming and AI and that kind of shit,” Hartzman says. “If we took our music off now, it would kind of defeat the purpose, because we’re trying to advocate for getting paid. If there’s a huge, needle-moving musician that makes the switch, I’m not afraid to fucking bandwagon on it. I don’t think I need to be the spokesperson for it.”
Still, when considering what DIY means in 2025, Hartzman says, “There’s no such thing as selling out anymore, because artists are having to try so much to survive. I think people get that.”
“It’s good to have a little money so you can contribute that back into your circle,” she adds. “If you get success, you take other people up with you and raise up your community.”