About — Chris Wills

Wednesday, June 24, 2026 (New York, NY) A year ago, Chris Wills had almost finished his debut album. Then a major depressive episode stopped everything. He put it down, stepped away, and came back twelve months later to finish what the record needed. That decision is all over the final result.

The title came from a fan. After hearing Wills’ song “Nothing Ever Really Goes Wrong,” he told Chris, “It’s like life, you expected something, were devastated when the opposite happened, but something better came through the pain. It’s like, ‘I’m Sorry, Congratulations.’” It turned out to be the most accurate description of what the record is and of what it cost to make it.

I’m Sorry, Congratulations traces the arc of a life coming apart and being rebuilt, from the restless momentum of youth to the kind of floor you don’t know exists until you’re lying on it, and then slowly back toward something that feels like home. It’s about disappointment as transformation. About how the people you love and the place you’re from turn out to be the whole answer.

Produced by Steven Colyer (Ethel Cain), the record moves between the intimate and the panoramic, the melodic precision of Billy Joel, the emotional intensity of The Cure, the restless honesty of Wilco, while staying closer in spirit to something older and more elemental. A record that believes in the song as a pure object, regardless of era.

Lead single “Try It!” is a Debord-influenced pop provocation about student debt, social media, and the machinery of control, a necessary confrontation before the record finds its way back to the personal. The closing stretch includes “Love Live On” featuring Revenge Wife (HOLYCHILD) and “Liz,” a voice memo of with his girlfriend in a car making up a song together, caught on tape. The album arrives with the quiet certainty of someone who has been through it and comes out the other side knowing what matters.

Chris Wills Bio:

Chris Wills is a singer-songwriter from New Jersey who has spent the last 9 years building something real, slowly. He works as a house painter. He has performed at SXSW, opened for Kate Nash and Revenge Wife, played on WFUV, and been covered by Gorilla Vs. Bear and Atwood Magazine. His songs have been placed in a Coca-Cola commercial, played on Sirius XMU, and charted on college radio. None of that is the point. I’m Sorry, Congratulations, his debut album, produced by Steven Colyer (Ethel Cain), is.