Chelsea Wolfe is an American singer-songwriter and musician from Roseville, United States. Born in 1983, she works under her own name and releases music through Chelsea Wolfe Music. She also appears in the duo Mrs. Piss.

Style and background

Wolfe’s music combines alternative rock, dark wave, gothic rock, rock, and singer-songwriter elements, and her work is also associated with experimental, folk, and Gothic styles. Her sound draws on gothic rock, doom metal, folk, and darkwave, and is often described as doom folk or drone-metal-art-folk. It uses layered guitar drone, experimental rock, neofolk, electronic textures, and heavy metal elements, with haunting vocals and dense, immersive soundscapes.

Raised in Northern California, she grows up with a country musician father who owns a home studio. She begins writing poetry at seven and recording songs at nine, later describing those early recordings as Casio-based gothy R&B songs. Her work is influenced by filmmakers Ingmar Bergman and David Lynch, as well as Soviet and apocalyptic literature.

Solo releases

Wolfe gains underground critical acclaim with The Grime and the Glow in 2010 and Ἀποκάλυψις in 2011, both of which combine gothic and folk elements. She then releases Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs in 2012, Pain Is Beauty in 2013, Abyss in 2015, and Hiss Spun in 2017, each showing a move toward heavier and more electronic material. Birth of Violence in 2019 returns to acoustic, folk-oriented writing, while She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She in 2024 explores trip hop, industrial, and electronica.

That later album is shaped by her sobriety journey, which begins in 2021.

Collaborations and other work

Wolfe collaborates widely outside her solo recordings. Her best-known collaboration is Bloodmoon: I with Converge in 2021. She also works with Russian Circles, Deafheaven, Myrkur, and composer Tyler Bates on the soundtrack to the 2022 horror film X. Her music also appears in promotional material for Game of Thrones and Fear the Walking Dead.