Wunderhorse: What’s The Story?

Words: Ben Kelly

Wunderhorse are a band with a lot of hype around them at the moment, but whats their story?

Going all the way to the beginning with the band’s frontman Jacob Slater, Jacob started off his career in a band called Dead Pretties, who only released 3 singles before splitting in 2017.

The reason for this split was said to be due to the members of the band wanting to focus on different musical projects.

After this, Jacob Slater moved down to the South West of England, continuing to write songs whilst also working other jobs in between, such as becoming a surfing instructor and even securing a role as Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook in the series ‘Pistol’.

In 2020 Jacob started his own solo music project, which eventually evolved into Wunderhorse becoming a full band in 2021. This full band consisted of Jacob on vocals/guitar, Harry Fowler on guitar, Peter Woodin on bass, Jamie Staples on drums and originally guitarist Oscar Browne who recorded with the band before leaving.

In September 2021, the band released their first single ‘Teal’, and what an outstanding statement this was for showing the world what they were really capable of, with this still being one of their most streamed songs to date. This was followed up by their debut album ‘Cub’ in October 2022, consisting of 11 spectacular songs that helped to continue to show their talent.

This album consisted of some of their most popular released to date including ‘Leader of the Pack’, ‘Purple’ and debut single ‘Teal’. The album received some great feedback being named as one of 2022’s best albums by big critics such as ‘NME’, ‘Riot’ and ‘Far Out’.

Following the release of album ‘Cub’ the band toured for the first time as a support acts for some other highly rated bands including Fontaines D.C., Pixies, Foals, Sam Fender and Declan Mckenna. They followed these shows up by touring around the United States in Spring 2023 also playing a number of shows in the UK even landing a spot in the Glastonbury 2023 lineup.

Most recently in August 2024, Wunderhorse released their second album ‘Midas’ which was teased for a long time, with many of the songs off of the album being played at a number of their gigs prior to release. This album provides a great mixture of emotions throughout the 10 songs on the album — almost taking you on a journey as you listen through. Since the release of the album it has helped massively boosting the bands monthly listeners on services such as Spotify from around 600,000 to a huge 1.4 million.

This really helps to show how much the band are starting to grow in popularity with many of their fans being able to relate to a lot of their songs.

With their UK and Ireland tour coming up in October the band will be playing 14 different venues across the UK and Ireland with a majority of the dates already being completely sold out. Wunderhorse are also set to play across 15 different venues all over North America helping to continue to reach out to their global fanbase.

Whats next for this rapidly growing band and what can we expect to see from them in the coming years ? Who knows but we are all extremely excited to see.