WET LEG Words by Andrew Handley Credit Hollie Fernando
Rhian Teasdale joins the video chat from her London home grasping her morning coffee, as birds chirp in the background. The nine-hour time delay means it’s becoming cold and dark in Melbourne. “So you’re at the end of your day?” she asks waiting for her bandmate to join. Hester Chambers (who Teasdale affectionately calls ‘HC’) is only a minute late but apologises in her delicately soft voice. “I’ve done that thing where I haven’t downloaded Zoom on my phone yet.” The two are the core members of the band Wet Leg, which formed in their hometown on the Isle of Wight in 2019. It was the release of their first single, the wonderfully fun and catchy ‘Chaise Longue’, in 2021 which began their stratospheric rise
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(the film clip has over five million views on YouTube.) They’ve since appeared on many of the late-night talk shows in the US and were the buzziest band at South by Southwest. Teasdale and Chambers would be the last two to tell you this though, humble as they are. The two met in college and had known each other for a decade by the time they decided to start a band. They were riding a ferris wheel at End of the Road festival, having just seen IDLES perform. “When we started this band, it was literally just so we could go to festivals in the summer and get booked for
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