Chelsea Joy Wolfe (born November 14, 1983) is a singer-songwriter from Sacramento, California, who describes her music as "drone-metal-art-folk." She covers a wide variety of genres with her music, incorporating varying degrees of folk, electronic, alternative rock, and heavy metal into her songs, and each album she puts out tends to be a New Sound Album. Her songs have been featured in car commercials, as well as trailers for Game of Thrones, The Killing, and Fear the Walking Dead. Also she became Wonder Woman in the Motion Comic adaptation of DC Comics' Dark Nights: Death Metal.
Discography:
- Albums:
- The Grime and The Glow (2010)
- Apokalypsis (2011)
- Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs (2012)
- Pain Is Beauty (2013)
- Abyss (2015)
- Hiss Spun (2017)
- Birth of Violence (2019)
- Bloodmoon: I (with Converge, 2021)
- She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She (2024)
- EPs, Live Albums, and Soundtracks
- Live At Roadburn 2012 (Live Album, 2012)
- Sing Songs Together... (Split EP with King Dude, 2013)
- Sing More Songs Together... (EP with King Dude, 2014)
- X: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2022) (co. produced with Tyler Bates)
Tropes:
- Album Intro Track: "Primal/Carnal" on Apokalypsis.
- Blank White Eyes: The cover of Apokalypsis.
- Broken Record: The lyric 'I remember everything you said' from "Sunstorm."
- Careful with That Axe: Apokalypsis opens with some unsettling screams.
- Cover Version: Of "You Are My Sunshine", which was featured in a trailer for the 3rd season of AMC's The Killing.
- Darker and Edgier: While her music was always very dark, her album Abyss was her heaviest to date upon release, taking influences from Industrial Metal, Doom Metal, and Noise Rock. Hiss Spun is even heavier, featuring prominent influence from Neurosis, among other things.
- Drone of Dread: Quite frequent in her more electronic work. "Through the Forest, Towards the Sea" is nothing but this.
- Echoing Acoustics: Her vocals tend to be mixed this way.
- Fang Thpeak: Chelsea's speech is slurred in "Color of Blood" from the Abyss album, giving this effect.
- Hell Is That Noise: The horn-like noises in "Scrape."
- Genre-Busting: She combines elements of folk, industrial, goth rock, and doom metal into a difficult to classify but very cohesive mix.
- Goth Rock: A definite influence on her style and aesthetic.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: Apokalypsis is stylized in Greek letters. Also a false cognate—it means "revelation" in Greek, not "apocalypse."
- Harsh Vocals: "Vex" features some death growls near the end, performed by Aaron Turner of Isis.
- Limited Lyrics Song / Single Stanza Song: "Movie Screen" only contains two lines, repeatedly layered over each other.Don't you ever cross that bridge in your mind again
It's like a movie screen - Live Album: Live At Roadburn 2012 in which she plays songs from her first two records.
- Pop-Star Composer: Not exactly a "pop star," but she provided the score to the slasher film X.
- Perky Goth: Chelsea herself definitely qualifies.
- Motion Comic: Chelsea became none less than Wonder Woman in the adaptation of Dark Nights: Death Metal, also making the song "Diana" for the official soundtrack.
- New Sound Album: Unknown Rooms is an acoustic folk album, in contrast to the predominantly heavier sound of the previous two albums.
- Pain Is Beauty incorporates electronic influences into many of the songs.
- Abyss incorporates elements from Industrial Metal, Noise Rock and Doom Metal.
- Hiss Spun incorporates a lot of metal elements such as doom metal.
- She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She fuses Goth Rock with Trip Hop.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Her general appearance.
- Textless Album Cover: The Grime and the Glow, Apokalypsis, Hiss Spun, and Birth of Violence.
- Title-Only Chorus: "Demons," although the original recording was entitled "Bounce House Demons," making it two-thirds of a Non-Appearing Title.
