Welles (musician)

Jesse Wells (born November 22, 1994), known professionally as Jesse Welles, or simply Welles, is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He released his debut studio album, Red Trees and White Trashes, which included Dave Cobb on production, in 2018. Welles previously performed under the name Jeh Sea Wells and was also the frontman of the bands Dead Indian, formed in 2012, and Cosmic-American, formed in 2015.
In 2024, Welles garnered attention on social media for writing and performing folk protest songs, including "The Poor", "Cancer", and "The Olympics", as well as "War Isn't Murder", a track about the Israel-Hamas War. Vulture has described his music as "A mix of old-fashioned folkie signifiers and trending-topic populism, delivered in hooky snippets on social media several times weekly".
Welles was born in Ozark, Arkansas and grew up there in Northwest Arkansas. He began playing guitar at age 11, and as a teenager he began recording songs which he sold on burned CDs. His musical influences growing up included the folk, country, classic rock, and Motown genres, as well as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Nirvana. Welles lived for a while until early 2016 in an art commune in the mountains around Fayetteville. He also cites "American wordsmiths" Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Cormac McCarthy, and Mark Twain as influences.
Under the name Jeh Sea Wells, Wells began his career around 2012, releasing home-made recordings of his music, posting them on sites including SoundCloud and Bandcamp. He formed the band Dead Indian in 2012, along with Dirk Porter and Simon Martin. In 2014, Welles released a song titled "Summer" and shortly afterwards, another song entitled Xmas 97. In 2015, he moved to Nashville to record songs with producer Dave Cobb. Also in 2015, Welles released a cover of the Nirvana song "Heart-Shaped Box". His band Dead Indian released two albums. In 2015, he and Simon Martin began a new band called Cosmic American with Skyler Greene and Blake Foster. They played on Fayetteville Public Television in 2016 and it was uploaded to YouTube. The band began recording an album but broke up before it was released.
In March 2017, Welles released a song titled "Life Like Mine" from his then-upcoming EP titled Codeine on C3 Records. In May 2017, Welles released a music video for the song "Life Like Mine", from the EP. Under the mononym Welles, he released the single "Rock N Roll" in April 2018, in promotion of his then-upcoming debut studio album Red Trees and White Trashes. Cobb served as a producer on the album, which was released on June 15, 2018 by 300 Entertainment. Reviewing the album for NPR, music critic Ann Powers wrote, "Red Trees and White Trashes has the heft and complexity to likely earn a few Grammy nominations; but it's also obvious that Wells will always be comfortable in some dirty rock and roll kitchen where, as he says in one song, 'everyone's kinda ugly in that way that looks pretty,' girls in blue bobs are smoking something illegal, and somebody's turned the amp up to 10 on the other side of the screen door."
Welles has opened for such rock bands including Dead Sara, Greta Van Fleet, Rival Sons, and Royal Blood. In February 2019, Welles performed as a headliner at Schubas in Chicago. In 2023, under the name Jesse Welles, he began playing cover songs on TikTok. After his father lived through a heart attack the following year, he began to write folk protest songs focused on current events. The songs, addressing topics including capitalism, microplastics and the fentanyl crisis in the United States, garnered attention on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. He has released the singles "Cancer" and "The Olympics", along with "War Isn't Murder", a protest song. His single "United Health", published weeks after the killing of Brian Thompson, criticizes UnitedHeathcare and its founder Richard T. Burke. In September 2024, Welles played Farm Aid; he was introduced by Dave Matthews as "one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard in my life."
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