WAIT//LESS Is More (Than You Deserve)

This Vancouver punk act is the hottest foursome in town and they want you to know it.

by Sebastian Buzzalino

Photos and video by Megan Magdalena

Published on December 5, 2024

There is nothing more punk these days than a band who knows they’re hot and refuses to apologize for it. A self-described “big, lumbering, fuck-off machine that’s going to destroy,” Vancouver’s WAIT//LESS have been torching west coast audiences with their maddening, blistering and abrasive punk.

At the front of it all, Rebecca White does her best ferocious Amy Taylor (of Amyl and the Sniffers) impression, taking no prisoners while clad in thigh-high boots, short shorts, and cropped tops that dare you to conflate their aesthetic with any sort of vulnerability. “I want people to be afraid and also turned on,” says White of their hyped live shows from a hotel room in Las Vegas, where she and bassist Allie Sheldan are hanging out for a couple of days after attending the wedding of photographer and frequent collaborator, Megan Magdalena.

“Like, what the fuck am I looking at?” Sheldan chimes in. “People have no idea. And then [White] has all these crazy moves… like we are up there being crazy and all energetic and, you know, sick fucking musicians. But, there’re lots of bands like that. You gotta shake your shit and having a person like Becca front and centre is so awesome. It’s part of the mesmerizing chaos that is WAIT//LESS.”

WAIT//LESS have built their reputation on the strength and intensity of their live shows, an energy that carries through the handful of punchy, DIY recordings they’ve released to date – previewing a proper release in early 2025. White leverages her sex appeal to stand tall at the front of the stage, bullwhip in one hand and bullhorn in another, forcing the band’s message onto anyone within earshot. It’s a challenge to all the bullshit that permeates our lives, as the foursome take aim at institutional structures of oppression that surround us all.

It’s fitting that their latest single and video, “Hot Girl,” takes aim squarely at the relentless sexism, objectification and fetishization endured by women. WAIT//LESS refuse to “just” be pretty faces and bodies for the male gaze and, with an eviscerating crunch of a carved apple (teacher’s pets have to learn, too), they launch into a tongue-in-cheek education on how to maximize your only value as a woman.

WAIT//LESS perform live on Dec. 11 at the Wise Hall (Vancouver) w/ Mugger (TX) and guests

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“The lyrics are like, ‘Look good/understood/do anything you can to be understood,’ and it’s all about how women are expected to just be hot to be accepted,” says White. “No matter what the circumstance might be, women aren’t allowed to age, or they’re not allowed to be sad. It’s like, smile and look good, or fuck off.”

In the video — inspired in part by Adriano Celentano’s absurdist video for “Prisencolinensinainciusol” and Van Halen’s overtly horny “Hot For Teacher” — White plays a hot teacher who gets increasingly frustrated with her students’ inability to learn how to be a hot girl. Satirical and hilarious, the band teamed up once again with Megan Magdalena to direct and produce the music video.

“She’s got the sauce,” says Sheldan, “It made it really easy and natural to collab with her. She totally understood what the song was trying to say, how ridiculous it all is, having Rebecca be this hot teacher just so mad at us idiot students.”

In a sense, “Hot Girl” serves as a microcosm of what WAIT//LESS sets out to accomplish. For all their brash bravado on stage, Sheldan admits that they’re still “the four of us together… really silly idiots. We don’t take ourselves too seriously even though the music is pretty serious.” Magdalena’s direct visual style and sense of humour aligns perfectly with WAIT//LESS’ over-the-top aesthetic that leverages excess for their social and political commentaries.

“We had this discussion when we were planning the video: like, should Rebecca be like a hot, sexy teacher or should she be more conservative? It seemed like she had to be hot, tits out, outrageous for this to work,” says Sheldan. “It’s hard to ignore all the shit that’s going on in our world and we’re all political people, we’re engaged. We do walk this fine line of having something to say, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously and we do want to have fun.”

“Life is fucked; we’re still going to write music that means something to us,” agrees White. “And we’re going to have a really good fucking time doing it. We hope that our shows and our music video, whatever we can offer, can offer an escape from how intense it all can be.”

“It’s the spirit of rock and roll that compels us,” laughs Sheldan. “We’re here to burn down the fucking building.”