Wish You Were Here Afraid of Everything

Wish You Were Here (Jesse of Stick To Your Guns) preps debut (stream a track)

Jesse Barnett is best known as the frontman of metalcore/hardcore band Stick To Your Guns, but more recently he’s shown off a love of indie/post-rock in the side project Trade Wind, and now he’s showing off an even softer side of him with his solo project Wish You Were Here. WYWH’s debut album I’m Afraid of Everything comes out September 27 (pre-order), and we’re premiering the lead single “Five Roses,” a hushed, atmospheric indie folk song that sounds closer to 2011-era Bon Iver than to the heavier music that Jesse is most famous for. Jesse is already a pro at this kind of thing, and if that seems surprising, he says he actually goes even further back with this kind of music than he does with hardcore:

I grew up in a family that just really appreciated good music, so stuff like Paul Simon, James Taylor, and Bill Withers was always playing around the house. I didn’t find punk and hardcore until high school, but I was already playing acoustic guitar and singing, so that kind of music is actually closer to my musical ‘origin story’ than punk.

Jesse wrote the songs over the course of the past five years, and he started recording them with producer Derek Hoffman (who’s also worked with Stick To Your Guns), who Jesse says really encouraged him to put these out into the world. “I had no plans to release any of the songs, but Derek really pushed me to finish what we had started and to write more,” he says.

Jesse plays a release show at LA’s Hotel Cafe on 9/28. After that, Stick To Your Guns are opening the Knocked Loose tour, which is also with Rotting Out, Candy, and SeeYouSpaceCowboy.

Listen to the new song below…