By Ben Homewood
(Features Editor, Music Week)

Nine of those were festival bookings with partners of ESNS Exchange, a Europe-wide network of festivals and media partners designed to boost the international careers of acts from across the continent. In the spring and summer of 2022, Wet Leg played sets for nine ESNS Exchange events, beginning with Les Nuits Botanique in Belgium, Primavera Sound in Spain and France’s Eurockéennes de Belfort. The band also starred at Winterthurer Musikfestwochen, Haldern Pop Festival in Germany, Belgium’s Pukkelpop and Lowlands in the Netherlands, as well as two festivals in the UK: Glastonbury in England and TRNSMT in Scotland.

Formerly known as the European Talent Exchange Program (ETEP), ESNS Exchange invites festivals, radio stations and media outlets to support acts that play ESNS each year. From its inception in 2003 up until 2020, 4,561 shows by 1,711 European artists from 38 countries were presented at 130 ESNS Exchange festivals. Wet Leg rank among the most popular acts from 2022’s livestreamed edition of ESNS, alongside the likes of Yard Act, Holly Humberstone and Priya Ragu. Regardless of the nine bookings listed for Wet Leg, their ESNS Exchange end result is seven festivals – because they do not include home country bookings.

Also in 2022, ESNS has launched ESNS Analytics, a hub for data associated with each act to grace its stage. A live tracker of activity on social media platforms and DSPs – which refreshes every day – reveals that Wet Leg’s engagement has risen by 6% during the past 28 day period, with some 1.4 million new fans coming on board. On Spotify, where their monthly listenership currently exceeds two million users, their follower count went up by 4%, while Facebook, Instagram and TikTok saw increases of 10%, 8% and 6% respectively. ESNS Analytics also lists engagement on Deezer, Twitter, YouTube and SoundCloud, with graphs supporting the data, too.

The Airplay tab on ESNS Analytics details every play on ESNS Exchange radio stations over the past 28 days. For Wet Leg, single ‘Wet Dream’ comes out on top, with 320 spins on KYRK-FM (The Shark 106.5 FM) and 246 plays on WJMZ-F2. Both stations are in the US. The track enjoyed heavy rotation across further American and Canadian stations, plus a handful in the UK (Absolute Radio, Radio X) and Germany (Bonn FM). The data shows heavy international plays across Wet Leg’s catalogue, with stations from Australia to Mexico and beyond supporting their music.

ESNS Analytics also tracks streams, with ‘Wet Dream’ firmly established as the most popular Wet Leg track at DSPs over the past 28 days (data from 14 November 2022). With 3,278,090 streams for the period, its total currently stands at 41,370,260. ‘Chaise Longue’, their 2020 breakthrough anthem, has 1,655,617 plays over the past 28 days and 34,860,190 in total. ‘Too Late Now’ is the third biggest Wet Leg song in terms of streaming data, with 11,196,486 total plays and 491,020 in the past month. ‘Angelica’ (9,216,849), ‘Ur Mum’ (8,052,211), ‘Being In Love’ (7,450,868) also top 5 million total plays.

Wet Leg’s ESNS story shows that the support of the ESNS Exchange programme has significantly boosted the Isle Of Wight duo’s career, which continues to soar to new heights. The band’s agent, Adele Slater at Wasserman, said that since playing Eurosonic on 19 January 2022 has been extremely busy for Wet Leg across the globe.

“This will continue into next year where they will be supporting Harry Styles in Australia, New Zealand and across Europe and the UK, they will be doing a few select festivals in the US and Europe as well as their first headline shows in Japan,” Slater said. “Then they’ll have some time off after the summer to finish the new album, before starting over again in 2024.”

Slater also tipped Wet Leg to become festival headliners in their own right.