Menu
· Conor Welsch
Some bands arrive with a single clean aesthetic. The Wombats arrived with chaos, humor, and a heart that kept getting bigger as the years went on. They are one of those rare groups who can write a song that sounds like a party and still leave you with a bruise afterward.
If you know them from the jump, you remember the rush. If you are meeting them now, you are catching a band that has learned how to stretch without snapping. Either way, The Wombats are not a nostalgia act. They are a living, evolving indie rock band from Liverpool that keeps finding new ways to feel honest.
The Wombats formed in Liverpool in the early 2000s as university friends who liked their guitars sharp and their choruses louder than their problems. The core trio has remained the same through every era of the band: Matthew Murphy, Tord Øverland Knudsen, and Dan Haggis.
They broke through in the late 2000s with A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation and quickly became one of the defining voices of that indie wave. Songs like Let’s Dance to Joy Division and Moving to New York did not just chart. They turned into rites of passage for people who grew up on loud bedrooms, cramped venues, and the feeling that good music could save a night.
At their best, The Wombats live in that space where sugar meets bite. Their songs are built on bright melodies, restless bass lines, and lyrics that are funnier than they are supposed to be. Then you look closer and realize the jokes were carrying something heavier the whole time.
They started out scrappy and fluorescent. Over time, their production grew richer, their writing more reflective. Records like This Modern Glitch and Glitterbug pushed them toward synth soaked indie pop without dropping the nervous energy that made them feel alive.
By the time Fix Yourself, Not the World landed, they were writing from a place that felt older, steadier, and more direct. The hooks were still there. The stakes just felt clearer.
In 2025, The Wombats released Oh! The Ocean, their newest studio album. It lands like a band looking both outward and inward at once. The sound is still big and kinetic, but the writing carries more weight. It is the same bright pulse, now lit by adulthood, memory, and the quiet fear of time moving faster than you want it to.
They are also touring hard again. That matters because The Wombats have always been a live band at heart. Their songs are built to be shouted back at the stage, not just streamed in the background.
Plenty of indie bands from their era burned out, froze in place, or turned into a tribute to themselves. The Wombats kept moving. They kept getting better at writing pop songs that feel like survival tools. They kept admitting that joy and dread can live in the same line.
They never lost their gift for making sadness dance. That is not easy. It is why their catalog keeps aging well, and why new listeners keep finding them with the same rush the early fans felt.
The Wombats are a band whose records reward full spins. Their albums are sequenced like nights out. You start laughing, you end up somewhere more complicated.
If you are building a collection with modern indie staples, start with A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation for the raw foundation. Move into Glitterbug for the widescreen glow. Then jump to Oh! The Ocean to hear how the band sounds now, still sharp, still melodic, still refusing to go quiet.
On vinyl, their music hits harder. The bass breathes, the synths swell, and the small cracks in Murphy’s voice feel closer. That is where their songwriting lives. In the human edges.
Put on Let’s Dance to Joy Division, then let the record keep running. The Wombats have always been more than their biggest hooks, and the deeper cuts are where you hear how fearless they really are.
They are proof that a band can grow up without losing its pulse. That indie rock can stay bright and strange and necessary. That a chorus can still feel like a lifeline if it is written honestly enough.
If you want a band that makes you move while telling the truth, you want The Wombats.