“I’m really hoping this is my year. I’m hoping for some more tours… I’m really trying to put out as much new music as possible in 2025,” says LA-based, 19-year-old folk/Americana/pop artist Cloe Wilder. However, she’s already got some touring under her belt, with a European tour supporting Spencer Sutherland throughout January and February, followed by a North American tour supporting the independent pop artist, which she’s currently in the middle of and which will find itself at The Foundry at The Fillmore this coming Thursday, March 20th (She actually opened the Fishtown venue for Charlotte Sands last April.) And Cloe Wilder is set to release her third EP, Life’s A Bitch, on March 21st, the day after her local stop.
“I think it’s about the growth. I put out my first EP when I was 14 and now I’m 19, and it’s all been documented. It feels like my little scrapbook,” Cloe Wilder tells me of her catalogue during a recent phone chat in-between dates with Spencer Sutherland (which have the two joined by our buddy Stacey Ryan, who Wilder says she’s a big fan of: “She’s amazing, so classically talented in a way that you don’t see anymore.”) And while Cloe tells me she thinks Life’s A Bitch feels very cohesive and organic (on its own and as part of her catalogue), she does admit that she’s trying a few new-ish things: “There are more things I’m trying to lean into, like folk… There’s a song of me tracking myself and a song that I recorded with just me and a piano in the living room.”
Last month Cloe dropped the second single off of the six-song EP, “Tallahassee,” a song co-written with Theo Kandel and Jack Klein that documents a falling out the singer/songwriter experienced amidst moving from Florida to Los Angeles last year. Cloe Wilder actually hails from Clearwater, Spring Training home of our Philadelphia Phillies, but also one of the primary headquarters of the Church of Scientology. “A lot of people assume that’s my culture, moving from there to LA [laughing]! But my family and I are definitely not part of that, but it’s poppin’ down there. John Travolta, Tom Cruise, all those guys are there. It’s everywhere down there,” Cloe jokes with me, admitting that she has had a number of encounters with the Xenu crew.
“Phoebe Bridgers wrote that song about Dianetics. Actually, my friends and I went to a Phoebe Bridgers concert there when we were like 16 and there were all these Scientologists with clipboards, trying to get all the teenage girls to sign up… And I have a friend who skateboards and they’re comin’ to the skatepark with their clipboards, too… It’s everywhere down there [laughs].”
These 2025 jaunts aren’t Cloe Wilder’s first with Spencer Sutherland, who actually plays a fairly prominent role in her history: “My first tour with Spencer was my junior year of high school, and I was doing online classes, but I was considering going back… but my mom got the call that I got the tour, and I was like, ‘Never mind, I’m good!’” She tells me that she got the offer based on a really tiny New York show she played that just happened to be attended by Sutherland’s manager. And while Wilder admits that writing is her favorite thing about being a musician (She’s been doing workshops since she was 12.), she tells me that touring has provided some really nice mile markers throughout her career: “The tours have really all tied it up in a bow, which is the goal. That’s what the shows are for me.”
In her most recent official bio, Cloe Wilder discusses how special it feels to connect with her fans that she can see crying in the front row as she’s singing and playing piano, admitting that she, herself, is a “concert crier.” So, I have to ask about the artists who have evoked tears from her, and she quickly replies, “Lana Del Rey, she’s been kind of my reason this whole time for being an artist,” before going on to recount a particularly notable experience with Lana: “I remember going to see her when I was 11 and my sister took me, and as soon as Lana Del Rey came out, I collapsed and sobbed [laughs]. My sister was like, ‘Get up! You’re embarrassing us!’”
*Get your tickets here.
**Listen for Cloe Wilder on the next edition of Philthy Radio, 3/21 (9-11pm ET) on Y-Not Radio.
