Wild Child

Texas’ Wild Child make complex, often exuberant indie pop that incorporates international folk influences. After releasing their debut album, 2011′s Pillow Talk, they were named Best Indie and Best Folk Band at the 2013 SXSW Festival in advance of their follow-up, that year’s The Runaround. Group members numbered over a half-dozen by the time they recorded their anxious yet typically effervescent fifth album, End of the World, in 2023. Formed in Austin, Texas and led by main songwriters and lead vocalists Alexander Beggins and Kelsey Wilson, Wild Child emerged with their first album, Pillow Talk, in October 2011. The band quickly earned a reputation for spirited live shows and won multiple awards at the SXSW Festival in March of 2013. Their second LP, October 2013′s The Runaround, featured the viral hit “Crazy Bird,” which led to U.S. television appearances on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and CBS This Morning: Saturday. Wild Child, which grew to include Beggins (vocals, baritone ukulele), Wilson (vocals, violin), Evan Magers (keyboards), Sadie Wolfe (cello), Chris D'Annunzio (bass), and Drew Brunetti (drums), released their third album, Fools, in October 2015 on Dine Alone and Dualtone Music. It spent a week at number 14 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Albums chart. The following June, they drew a crowd of 25,000 at a local radio station’s outdoor music series. Another Dualtone full-length, Expectations, appeared in February 2018 and reached as high as number six on the Heatseekers chart as well as landing in the Top 20 of the Billboard Independent and Vinyl Albums charts. It was recorded with the lineup of Beggins, Wilson, Wolfe, Matt Bradshaw (keyboards, trumpet), Cody Ackors (guitar, trombone), Tyler Osmond (bass), and Tom Myers (drums). During the five years between Expectations and their next album, End of the World, Wild Child were sidelined from touring with the rest of the music industry due to the pandemic, endured the Texas ice storm of 2021 (the inspiration for the title track), added John Calvin Abney — the main duo’s first songwriting collaborator — to the lineup, and established their own label, Reba’s Ranch Records. In partnership with Secretly Distribution, End of the World arrived on the label in March 2023 and was soon followed by an extensive U.S. tour. ~ Marcy Donelson