Welles

Arkansas-based musician Jesse Welles operates under numerous aliases, one of which is Welles, and he has also recorded as Jeh Sea Wells while serving as frontman for Dead Indian and Cosmic American. His approach fuses the distorted, melody-driven force associated with Kurt Cobain, the sincere indie rock presence of Kyle Craft, and the flamboyant rock and roll spectacle of the Struts. He first surfaced in 2012 under the Jeh Sea Wells name by uploading a series of self-produced singles and albums to streaming platforms. Later that same year he assembled Dead Indian alongside Dirk Porter and Simon Martin, and for a short time performed using the Breck Shipley identity. Dead Indian released the albums Lead Me to the Sky and When We Live before disbanding in 2015. After the split he resumed activity as Jeh Sea Wells and supplied a version of Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” to the Pigeons and Planes–curated collection Teenage Angst Has Paid Off Well. He subsequently joined forces with Dead Indian drummer Simon Martin plus Skyler Greene and Blake Foster to create Cosmic American, yet the band dissolved the next year. Adopting the Welles moniker in 2017, he issued the Codeine EP on C3 Records. The following year he signed with Atlantic’s 300 Entertainment imprint and delivered his first full-length album, Red Trees and White Trashes.