The introspective, goth-tinged rock of producer, composer and singer Wendy Rae Fowler has been years in the making. Her story spans continents – raised in North Carolina, she has lived in Virginia, Georgia, California, Tokyo, Portland, London and Brighton – and collaborations with some of rock’s greatest names: Queens of the Stone Age, Mark Lanegan, Eagles of Death Metal, U.N.K.L.E, Humanist and more.

Before music exerted its gravitational pull, Fowler planned to be a dancer. Training hard in her teens, she accepted a dance scholarship at the EDGE Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. But then she discovered punk rock and alternative culture – far removed from the country and classic rock diet she grew up on – and began to see a different future.

Fowler acquired her first guitar at 22 and started writing songs on the quiet. After a car accident curtailed her dance career, she got a job on the door of Sunset Boulevard’s legendary Viper Room, where encounters with Iggy Pop, Donovan, the Gun Club’s Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Siouxsie Sioux further stirred her musical ambitions. To make ends meet, Fowler took a series of acting jobs, featuring in Gap’s famous musical commercials, and in the movies She’s All That and Monkey Bone. For a time, Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk took her under his wing, directing her in Melvin Goes to Dinner.

By now, the desire to make music was overwhelming. After a friend gave Fowler a 4-track recorder, she was able to turn the sounds in her head into thrilling reality. Overhearing her playing, her roommate’s boyfriend Pete Stahl (Scream, Goatsnake, Wool) suggested she switch to bass and invited her to join his band Earthlings?, the legendary Joshua Tree space rock collective. Fowler would play in the band for the next two years, during which they opened from Queens of the Stone Age. This marked the beginning of a series of collaborations between Fowler and Queens; under the nom de plume Wendy Rae Moan, she contributed vocals to their classic second album, Rated R, and to Eagles of Death Metal’s Death by Sexy LP. It was via QOTSA that Fowler met and later married Screaming Trees singer-turned-solo artist Mark Lanegan. During their eight-year relationship, Fowler appeared in his 2001 album Field Songs, and 2003’s magisterial Bubblegum, as well as its preceding EP Here Comes that Weird Chill.

The mid-2000s brought a move to the UK and fresh musical pastures. At a barbeque at Josh Homme’s house, Fowler had met British composer and producer Richard File, then one half of U.N.K.L.E. Connecting over shared influences – Can, Massive Attack, Portishead – they formed experimental rock act We Fell To Earth. In their darkly evocative debut LP, Fowler’s voice had truly found a home. Others agreed: it was heralded as “eerie and unforgettable” by The Guardian and “brutal and beautiful” by The Sunday Times.

Momentum gathered as they toured with Air, Thirty Seconds to Mars and The Big Pink, and lent their cinematic sounds to TV shows including Gossip Girl, CSI: New York and The Prisoner. The pair also composed the theme song for the US version of the award-winning series The Killing. But disagreements with their label led to the band being put on hiatus in 2010 and ultimately dissolving.

A decade of experimentation and collaboration followed, with Fowler appearing on records by U.N.K.L.E, Jemma Freeman and the Cosmic Something, Timo Maas, Toydrum and Maya Jane Coles. She composed music for film, creating rich ambient soundscapes for the acclaimed 2017 BBC documentary A Year in an English Garden: Flicker + Pulse, and the experimental Clay and Bone, narrated by author Will Self. In 2018, Fowler released the electrifying Warped, her first album under her own name, later releasing a remastered version, Warped: Resurrection, on her freshly minted label Ghost Rhythm records in 2021. The music and culture zine God Is in the TV hailed it as “Swampy, heady, woozy and with more than a touch of voodoo about it.”

The past three years have seen Fowler putting out solo tracks while working as a bass player-for-hire, supporting Pulp in Alexis Taylor’s band and opening for Depeche Mode in the fêted goth-rock quartet Humanist. This baptism of fire with Humanist led to her becoming a permanent member of the band. This autumn they join Black Rebel Motorcycle Club on their US tour.

Fowler’s musical journey continues apace, never wavering and never standing still.

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