Imagine Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” stripped of its delicate, melancholic glow and plunged into a shadowy, doomgaze abyss. That’s exactly what Iress, the LA-based alt shoegaze outfit, delivers with their cover. The track swaps the original’s delicate introspection for something heavier, moodier, and unmistakably their own.
The band had been kicking around the idea of a cover for years, tossing out suggestions and even cutting a few demos that never quite clicked.
Then came “Billie”—their shorthand for Eilish’s existential ballad from the 2023 Barbie soundtrack.
“The song & vocal performance is already so powerful and delicate, we wanted to keep that essence with our version as well,” says Michelle Malley, Iress’s vocalist. What started as a live experiment at their album release show last year, where the crowd’s reaction hit “euphoric,” evolved into a full recording after their UK tour. The opening ethereal moans crash into thick, heavy-metal guitar chords, with Malley’s dramatic belts soaring over the top—a stark pivot from Eilish’s whispery restraint.
Iress isn’t new to brooding soundscapes. Their July 2024 album, Sleep Now, In Reverse, leaned into boisterous yet intimate post-metal vibes, and this cover fits right into that wheelhouse.
It’s a tonal match—Eilish’s dark, questioning lyrics about purpose and identity feel at home draped in Iress’s pounding instrumentation. “We knew we wanted to transform a pop song and make it our own,” Malley explains, and they’ve done just that, keeping the song’s core intact while bending it into their gloomy world.
The timing’s tight—dropped just ahead of their Southwest shows with Faetooth later this month, followed by Pacific Northwest dates with Spirit Mother. No word yet from Eilish herself, but Malley’s hopeful: “Hopefully, Billie Eilish & our fans appreciate what we’ve created because we love it.” It’s out now, everywhere, for anyone curious to hear Barbie’s existential crisis reimagined as a doomgaze fever dream.
Here’s the original:
