WESLEE, the magnetic duo celebrated for their dreamlike and ethereal sounds, has just unveiled their highly anticipated EP, “World One” — a three-track project delving into the intricacies of love.

The EP’s atmospheric standout, “Big Collide,” is out now and serves as the third and final track, elegantly concluding the project and bringing to a close the visually captivating series expertly crafted by illustrator Agnes Xantippa Boman.

“World One” showcases WESLEE’s dynamic evolution, seamlessly blending elements of R&B, Indie, Soul, and Pop to deliver a refreshing and immersive musical experience. We had the honour of sitting down with the duo to discuss their early days, their brand-new and awe-inspiring EP, and what lies ahead in 2024.

Read below for the exclusive interviews…

Tell us about your EP, “World One”! What themes does it explore and what do you hope to say with the project? How does it relate or differ from your previous work?
Josh Grant – It’s all stages of love. Emma once used Star Wars as an analogy, which I liked, the story of love told backwards.

Emma DD – “World One” comes in three acts. “Love You I Do” was the first act, it’s about the aftermath of a relationship when you’re reflecting on it. Act two was “What It Feels Like”, that’s right before you fall in love.

J – When you meet someone and it’s butterflies.

E – In act three, “Big Collide” is the beginning of the end. When you know that it’s over — the show is ended, the credits have rolled, but for some reason, we’re still in the cinema.

J – The idea behind the ‘Worlds’ was we had a lot of songs and we thought it’d be cool to group them together. It came from Emma saying “what world does this live in?” which then led us to the realisation we had all these little bodies of work that felt like their own entities. It differs from our previous work because we’ve thought more about the big picture, there’s intention behind it.

E – It feels more thoughtful. 

J- The creative process itself wasn’t different.

E – We were still making music from energy.

J – It just felt like there was more intention behind where the songs go. We’d be writing and thinking ‘Where could this go? Where does it live?’

E – I don’t hate our old stuff, but this really feels like us now, it’s like looking back at your old diary and thinking who is that?

J – It’s present.

E – It shows growth.

When embarking on creative collaborations, what do you look for? What was it about Agnes Xantippa Boman’s work that excited you and what was the collaborative process like?
E – The idea behind this project is that we wanted to collaborate with someone whose work we liked enough to be able to trust them to create something with zero input on our behalf. We were like, do we like this? Is it dope? Yes! Let’s reach out and hope they say yes.

J – Traditionally with music videos artists will have an idea of what they want and take it to someone; but we wanted to find creatives we like who we could just hand the music over to and say do whatever you want, we just need a visual format at the end of it.

With art, it’s hard to say what the specific thing you like is, it’s just a feeling. Agnes’s art lined up with our aesthetic. Weirdly, after seeing it all, it really feels like us. Which is crazy considering we’ve never met her in person. She did a great job of turning it into something tangible.

E – Collaborating with Agnes was so easy and wonderful. From the first time we met with her and she showed us her storyboard, the reaction was ‘holy shit, this person gets it!’ 

Art in general, once it leaves your hands, it becomes something else to someone anyway so it’s like let’s just collaborate and make it our thing together

Specifically for the featured track, can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind the song and how the visuals converse with its message and sound?
J – The original inspiration behind Big Collide was just me and Emma talking about a breakup I went through that turned into the song. It’s the first track we started for this ‘World’  but took the longest to finish. A lot of Emma’s writing is about relationships, not always hers but she draws from human relationships and people around her.

The inspiration behind the visuals is a question for Agnes, we had zero input! Her interpretation is amazing. She hit the nail on the head. This is the world crescendo where it blows up and she was spot on with the video, it was perfect.

How did you initially get connected with WESLEE and what about their music resonated with you?
Being connected with WESLEE feels like a stroke of good fortune. I was casually browsing through Instagram stories when an animator I follow reposted a story from someone in search of animators. The story had minimal details, and I don’t even recall it specifying that it was related to music videos. However, having just graduated and actively seeking opportunities, I seized the chance. Little did I anticipate that being on Instagram at that precise moment would lead me to secure the commission of my dreams, quite literally.

During my time at the Glasgow School of Art, when asked about my dream job post-graduation, I consistently expressed my aspiration to create a music video for a band. While I don’t necessarily believe in serendipity, let’s just say I feel incredibly lucky.

I’m not the best at articulating my feelings around music. All I can say is that when WESLEE sent over the songs I would be working with, I fell in love with all three songs immediately. They are so atmospheric and ideas started forming immediately.

How did you set out to capture and enhance the musicality with a visual identity?
It felt important for me to build a world that reflected the soft and warm feeling I felt when listening to the songs, but simultaneously, I wanted to portray the more unsettling undertones found in the lyrics. Emma is a wonderful lyricist, and I took inspiration directly from her writing when developing the concept for the world. A theme that runs through all three songs is the conflicting feelings you experience in love. The lyrics describe love in a way that makes it sound like something infesting your mind, driving you insane. I wanted a symbolic manifestation of these sensations. It’s set upon a deceivingly beautiful backdrop, in a remote house in the mountains, where on first on-look, it all is rose-tinted and shiny. It starts off this way. But in the narrative that unfolds over the course of the three videos, more and more chaos ensues.

It is hard to describe exactly how you set out to capture a song in a visual identity when a lot of it is guided by feeling and intuition. I’d listen to the song and be reminded of a pink sky, or close my eyes and see how things would move to a specific sound. Some things come to you without much explanation.

What was your process like? Can you talk us through the BTS images?
The initial step for me is filling out a bunch of sketchbook pages while listening to the song over and over. In a traditional manner, using pen and pencil, I generate loose drawings of associations and the repetitive nature allows a personal narrative to develop in my sketches. I then work on storyboards, which feel almost like writing a comic. From there, I make a so-called ’animatic’ which puts the storyboard on a timeline, to see how the imagery aligns to the rhythm of the music. Once I am happy with the flow of everything, I begin the tedious but for me fun process of animating each element digitally. My preferred software is Procreate, before composing it all in Adobe After Effects.