Finn Wolfhard's upbringing was far from normal. Catapulted to fame aged 13 as one of the stars of Stranger Things, his adolescent years were divided between high school in his hometown of Vancouver and long months in the US shooting the Netflix show. Working so much throughout his childhood left little time for thinking about what he wanted to do with his life beyond the Upside Down, but since Stranger Things wrapped, he's been using music — another obsession of his, and one he pursued in teenage bands like Calpurnia and the Aubreys — to forge his next path.

"When you spend your entire childhood on the move, performing, and having a lot of pressure, you stop wanting to impress anyone," Wolfhard tells Dazed. We meet in a timber-decked Victorian pub in central London, with the Canadian actor and musician on an extended visit to the English capital. From the off, he's chirpy and polite, waxing lyrical about the city's green spaces and opening up about his songwriting process. 

"Some of these songs are straight-up stories, but others are more introspective, asking a lot of questions about adult life, and trying to process whatever feelings I've been having. I'm always having a battle with myself about self-confidence and self-worth; because I got so famous young, I always ask, 'Why me? Why did I get these opportunities as opposed to so-and-so?'"

Wolfhard's debut solo record Happy Birthday (2025) interrogated some of these thoughts in a compact, lo-fi format, with the bulk of the album recorded on a four-track tape cassette. He sees his follow-up Fire From The Hip (released July 10) as “a continuation” both thematically and sonically: recording on a Studer 24-track reel-to-reel recorder, he stuck with the raw, bluesy style and tongue-in-cheek lyrics mapped out on previous releases. However, he also wanted to expand his sound, bringing in more collaborators and thinking about how to create a special live experience.

"I still wanted to have a kind of home record feeling to it, but I also wanted it to sound more high fidelity," he says, reflecting on a two-week stint in which he recorded the band with his album at Pachyderm Studios in Minnesota, which has previously hosted Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Beach House and countless others.. "It's a live-in studio with a lot of history, and there's just something about it. It felt like somewhere that's stuck in the 60s, in the best way. You can feel all of this energy coming from it."

While he was recording the album, the weather was so cold – "literally arctic temperatures" – that his hair would freeze on the way to the studio. Still, he looks back on it as a happy time. "We'd record all day until dinner time, then eat, listen to music, play guitar… we became a little family,” he says.

Wolfhard's Canadian parents met over a shared love for the Stone Roses, and the 23-year-old's love for British guitar music hums from the album like the green glow of cartoon radiation. There's a Beatles-esque quality to the way he conjoins jangly guitar, flat snares, and "ooh-aah" harmonies on lead single “I'll Let You Finish”, while the outro of “Nice To Meet You Again” sees him trail off from American folksy charm into a delicate half-time jam with the warm, piano-driven feel of Arctic Monkeys' The Car.

There's also a subtle dose of comic realism to Wolfhard's lyricism that ensures his music never runs into self-aggrandisement. He delivers touches of wordplay and self-mocker throughout; there's hallucinogen-themed slang on 'Common Side Effects', where he sings “I took boomers / Just to feel like George Clooney / After dinner, I walk home / The exact same pain again” ('boomer' is mid-West slang for magic mushrooms, FYI). The country-ish “Maggie”, meanwhile, features what seems to be a darkly comic reference to 9/11 ("I tried to touch you / You think I love you / You read to kids just like George W").

He would like to see more levity in guitar music. "Sometimes my favourite lyrics are ones that have a sense of humour. Someone in the indie guitar scene [who does that well] is MJ Lenderman. He'snot taking things too seriously but also referencing pop culture in a really irreverent way. The Beatles had such a sense of humour, too. When there's playfulness, that's the best thing. And when it's sad, and you're not afraid to go there at the same time. You've gotta have both!"

One of Wolfhard’s key concerns, while crafting the album, was how it would play live. He set off on a North America tour last autumn, having played a long run of successful global dates earlier that year (he pinpoints a gig at Electric Brixton as his favourite). "I wrote this record to play on tour; they go hand in hand," he explains. "You can feel the people in the songs. The style of the record is imperfect; it's all about feeling rather than exact, perfect takes."

As someone who most people know as an actor rather than a musician, there's an extra edge to these shows, one that Wolfhard relishes. "I've got to show people that music isn't just another thing that I'm trying to do to be cool. I have to prove myself in a way that I feel is really healthy. I'm really excited."

Finn Wolfhard's new album Fire From The Hip is out July 10.