Q&A: Dream Nails Unleash Primitive Power Through Surreal Punk Evolution in ‘You Wish’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photo Credit: Marieke Macklon
DREAM NAILS ARE ENTERING A NEW REALM — one defined by raw surrealism, primal instinct and emotional unearthing. On their forthcoming album You Wish, the London-based trio abandon rigid punk frameworks and lean into the intuitive and the unfiltered. Dream Nails return with a renewed sense of purpose on their ferocious new single, ‘House Of Bones,’ a visceral preview of You Wish, arriving February 6, 2026. Known for their sharp punk bite, the band now steps into a more expansive, introspective realm. This new chapter is less about shouting answers and more about excavating feelings and subconscious truths.
You Wish marks a striking evolution for Dream Nails. Once grounded firmly in the didactic tradition of classic punk, the band now leans into curiosity and complexity, channeling questioning rather than instruction.
“As we’ve matured as women and as musicians, we’re definitely more nuanced in our thinking,” drummer Lucy Katz says. “A lot of this album is more questioning, trying to open up a more nuanced way of thinking about things, while at the same time cultivating strength and resilience, and a return to the transcendental as a way of dealing with our times.”
This new era finds the trio tapping into what Katz describes as “very primitive, ancestral feelings,” drawing from the forgotten and the mystical to navigate an increasingly chaotic world. Surrealism becomes both shield and compass.
“I think surrealism is the only way, as artists, that we can respond to such a confusing, chaotic world,” she shares. “Embracing weirdness, embracing surrealness — that’s something I want to carry through.”
At the heart of this sonic shift lies the single “House Of Bones.” Recorded with acclaimed producer and engineer Ali Chant, the track channels resilience and self-empowerment, transforming vulnerability into defiance.
“This song is about finding strength within yourself and safety in your own body,” Katz says. “You can’t control how other people act, but if you hold strong and always know yourself, then wherever you are, you’re always home.”
For guitarist Anya Pearson, the track also confronts the persistent misogyny they’ve faced in the music industry. “From being told where to plug in my guitar, to not being permitted backstage because it’s ‘bands only,’” she says, “‘House of Bones’ is saying: Haters will hate, but we keep going, no matter what.”
Luna sat down exclusively with Dream Nails’ drummer Lucy Katz to unpack what it truly means to break free from punk’s rigid rulebook and step into something more intuitive and mystical. In our conversation, Katz reflected on the band’s fearless evolution with You Wish, detailing how the creative process shifted from direct to a more instinctual, exploratory practice rooted in curiosity and surrealism.
Photo Credit: Marieke Macklon
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?
LUCY: We have changed a lot album-to-album. This is our third album and it's our first as a three piece, and when we were recording it earlier this year in Bristol, UK, with our producer Ali Chan, he christened a new genre after what he was interpreting as our sound, and that genre is New Age Hard Rock. I think we're still grappling with being referred to as New Age because that had quite negative connotations, but I think it actually sums up our sound and the themes that we're dealing with in this album. It's very much trying to go back to something very primitive and ancestral and drawing on something that's within us and maybe forgotten in order to try and find new ways of living in our world, new ways of responding to things that are happening and also creating a new rock sound as well.
LUNA: You just released your newest single “House of Bones” and you’ve described the song as finding safety within your own body. What is the inspiration behind the track or the feeling that pushed this story to the surface?
LUCY: That's a great question. This track had an interesting trajectory because the instrumental we wrote as part of another song didn't quite make it to come to fruition, but there was something about the riff that we really liked and that we wanted to take forward. Around the time that we wrote it was around the time that Billie Eilish and Charli XCX’s song “Guess” came out, and in that song they drew inspiration from a Daft Punk song. The Daft Punk song inspired that song where they're listing things. We really wanted to have a song that included a list, but it turned out to be a mantra, or a way of reminding yourself when you're going through a difficult time, when you're trying to process something difficult, you come up with a mantra to ground yourself and remind yourself how strong you are. That's where the “Didn't sway / Didn't break / Didn't bend / Didn't shift” came from. That was definitely the first lyrical idea in the song.
“House of Bones” came out of some free writing that we did, so we wrote a lot of this album through free writing. It was the first time all three of us contributed equally to lyrics, and wrote all the lyrics when we were together in the same room as well. We wanted to do a stream of consciousness writing and “House of Bones” was definitely something that came out of the free writing, and it was just so gothic and weird. It's one of my favorite tracks on the album, because it culminates to such a frantic final 30 seconds and a frantic breakdown, and I think that it encapsulates a lot of what we were trying to achieve musically. It’s definitely my favorite banger.
LUNA: “House of Bones” is just a sneak peek into your upcoming third album You Wish which you’ve shared is your most creative and vulnerable work to date. What themes or narratives did you set out to explore with this project?
LUCY: I think it really marks a big shift for us as a punk band. We were very much born in the tradition of classic punk, quite didactic, like I'm going to tell you what I think. I think as we've developed as a band, and as we've also matured as women and as musicians, it's not that we're writing from a more unsure standpoint, but we're definitely more nuanced in our thinking, and we like to posit ourselves as much more questioning and much more curious. That is the starting point for our punk, rather than it being me telling you exactly what I think. A lot of this album is more questioning, trying to open up a more nuanced way of thinking about things, while at the same time trying to cultivate strength and resilience as well, and a return to the transcendental as a way of dealing with our times. We've definitely tried to tap into something more mystical, a little bit softer, perhaps, as a way of approaching our themes.
LUNA: I would love to touch more on the creative process behind You Wish. You worked with producer Ali Chant. What was it like bringing him into your creative process, and how did he influence the sound of the album?
LUCY: He has a studio full of crazy looking toys. I think you know when you bring someone else into your process, especially at such a moment that you're committing everything to record, you have to have so much trust, because the producer really does become a fourth member of the group. I think the reason why we wanted to work with Ali is that we could tell that he was just very, very playful, and he also didn't want to impose himself or his own ideas too strongly. I think, especially as women, when you're working with a man, quite often, you want to know that you're going to be respected. You just have to have a lot of trust, a lot of respect. That's something that we could tell that Ali was going to bring, that he just cares about the song and making the song as good as possible. While we were recording with him, he would bring out these crazy, medieval looking drums, or strange little percussion instruments that we would play around with and add on.
LUNA: Did you play or experiment with any new instruments you haven’t had a chance to try out on previous projects?
LUCY: We had a trumpet player, who is a local Bristol musical legend, this man called Pete Judge, who came and did trumpet for a couple of the tracks. That was something that Ali wanted to try. That was the biggest honor of my life. I just can't believe that I've written music that has a trumpet on it. It was so cool. I think that's what's amazing when you develop as musicians, is that you get to incorporate all these elements that previously you thought weren't possible.
We also have a mandolin on the final part of the final track, which is very beautiful, that was played by Ali, the producer. We have a lot of piano and a lot of synth, which we have had before. We had an organ. We have a Wurlitzer, because Mimi, our singer and bassist, she's actually a classically trained pianist, so she's got the keys covered. Between her and Anya, they did a lot of stuff on the pianos and keys and organs. Anya actually played violin. She bought some violin as well, but we played a lot more with voice. This is the first album that Mimi's singing on, so it was amazing watching her use her voice as an instrument. We've got some really cool vocal bits and bobs on there as well.
LUNA: Were there any specific breakthroughs or lessons you learned while creating You Wish that have carried over to your future releases and projects?
LUCY: That's such a cool question. I think it's been really nice working as a unit of three, in terms of, I think on previous albums, Anya, our guitarist, would bring in melody, or she would be the first to introduce lyrical ideas, and we build a song around there. But it has been amazing writing everything, all the instrumental and all of the words and lyrics, the three of us in the room together. It definitely lent itself to a feeling of we're three witches around a cauldron, and we're cooking up our weird little songs together. I think we've unleashed a really strong sense of the surreal that I would like to carry through. Again, I think surrealism is the only way as artists, that we can respond to such a confusing, chaotic world and context that we're all living in, and I think, embracing weirdness, embracing surrealness, really, once and for all, ridding ourselves of any conception of what it is to be a cool band or cool people, I think we've learned as musicians and as people that it's dangerous to be nonchalant. It's dangerous to not try and so, ridding ourselves once and for all of that, and embracing the cringe, embracing the weird, embracing the surreal, it makes things much more interesting. I think that's something that we're definitely going to carry on doing.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on the album — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Dream Nails is right now?
LUCY: I know we all have different answers. I really like “The Information.” “The Information” was the third single that we released. We released it back in September, and it was also the last song that we wrote before we went to record. It's also the first song that we wrote in conjunction with somebody else, with a good friend of ours, who is also a producer. He produced our first album, so we worked on the song with him in a co-writing session. But why it's my favorite is it just really sums up the most new agey idea of wanting to feel and experience everything at the same time. It's psychedelic in its sound and it's psychedelic in its philosophy. I like it because it feels like an attempt to open a magic portal, and try and bring ourselves closer to some cosmic, universal truth. It's pretty hippie shit for a punk band.
LUNA: When you feel a creative spark coming on, what do you need in your space to nurture it? Are there any rituals, objects, or energies you always return to?
LUCY: I think it's just the good old fashioned Notes app in my phone. Something we did on this album, especially for Mimi and I because we hadn't really written lyrics before — and it's so vulnerable writing and sharing your writing — something that we did when we were writing lyrics together is we would write on pen and paper, but we would sharpen them by WhatsApping each other. We would all be sitting together, and we would be using WhatsApp to shuttle the lyrics back and forth and refine them and shave them and get them to the place that we wanted. In a way, using WhatsApp became our little writing ritual, which also feels appropriate given that another core concept that the album deals with is tech anxiety and feeling overwhelmed by tech, the use of social media and how it's fragmented the way that we all communicate with each other, and how we perceive ourselves as well.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
LUCY: All I ever want from someone who interacts with our music is for them to feel a little bit stronger than they did before they started listening. It's the greatest thing that people come up to us after shows, and they tell us that our music has helped them feel strong or has gotten them through a difficult moment. When we're playing shows and seeing everyone smiling, seeing everyone release a little bit physically, and feeling like they can give themselves over to that moment when they're watching us or listening to us, and that we can hold them for a moment and make them feel a little bit stronger and a little bit more inspired, and ideally, as well, they want to start their own band. The main thing that we want as a band, we want to launch a million other bands. At every show that we play, I give away drumsticks to try and make a drummer. We just want to make all our listeners obviously feel stronger, feel like they can handle their shit a bit better, and also feel like they want to express themselves creatively as well, if they felt inhabited to do that.
LUNA: What does confidence look like for you as artists in 2026 compared to earlier eras of the band?
LUCY: It's harder, more so in the music industry, to feel grounded and solid as a band. I think that the way that we feel the most grounded and the most together is when the three of us are together, rocking out. You have to rely upon your peers and rely upon your friends, rely upon people in the music industry or in any industry that you're in that you trust and definitely do it for each other. I think what makes us strong is wanting to play the best that we possibly can for each other, because we all individually love playing music. We appreciate music so differently, each in our own way, and we all have very different influences and things that excite us. That's why being in a band is so cool, because it's proof that people can get along, even if they're very different, or they come from different places, and they can make something that's bigger than them.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the upcoming year look like for you that you would like to share with Luna?
LUCY: We feel really excited and really lucky that we're getting to release an album on Marshall, on our label, and that we have the resources that we can do that. I think being a musician is so difficult, and we're all holding down other jobs. We're all trying to do a million other things. Being a musician doesn't pay, so we're just trying to enjoy it and to find success in the way that we touch people and that we connect with our audience, rather than trying to become too obsessed with metrics, being on playlists, being on the radio or booking certain festivals. We’re so happy and grateful every time that we can share our music with the people that need to hear it. We’re excited to do that next year in whatever way that we can.
