Jesse Allen Breckenridge Wells , known professionally as Jesse Welles, is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Welles was born in Ozark, Arkansas, and grew up there in Northwest Arkansas. He began playing guitar at age 11, and as a teenager he began recording songs which he sold on burned CDs. His musical influences growing up included the folk, country, classic rock, and Motown genres, as well as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Nirvana. In 2016, Welles lived for a while in an abandoned building turned art commune in the mountains around Fayetteville. He also cites “American wordsmiths” Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Cormac McCarthy, and Mark Twain as influences.
Under the name Jesse Wells, Welles began his career around 2012, releasing home-made recordings of his music, posting them on sites including SoundCloud and Bandcamp. He formed the band Dead Indian in 2012, along with Dirk Porter and Simon Martin. In 2014, Welles released a song titled “Summer” and shortly afterwards, another song entitled Xmas 97. In 2015, he moved to Nashville to record songs with producer Dave Cobb. Also in 2015, Welles released a cover of the Nirvana song “Heart-Shaped Box”.
In March 2017, Welles released a song titled “Life Like Mine” from his then-upcoming EP titled Codeine on C3 Records. In May 2017, Welles released a music video for the song “Life Like Mine”, from the EP. Under the mononym Welles, he released the single “Rock N Roll” in April 2018, in promotion of his then-upcoming debut studio album Red Trees and White Trashes. Cobb served as a producer on the album, which was released on June 15, 2018, by 300 Entertainment. Reviewing the album for NPR, music critic Ann Powers wrote, “Red Trees and White Trashes has the heft and complexity to likely earn a few Grammy nominations; but it’s also obvious that Wells will always be comfortable in some dirty rock and roll kitchen where, as he says in one song, ‘everyone’s kinda ugly in that way that looks pretty,’ girls in blue bobs are smoking something illegal, and somebody’s turned the amp up to 10 on the other side of the screen door.”
In February 2019, Welles performed as a headliner at Schubas in Chicago. In 2023, under the name Jesse Welles, he began playing cover songs on TikTok. After his father lived through a heart attack the following year, he began to write folk protest songs focused on current events. The songs, addressing topics including capitalism, microplastics and the fentanyl crisis in the United States, garnered attention on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. He has released the singles “Cancer” and “The Olympics”, along with “War Isn’t Murder”, a protest song about the Gaza war. His single “United Health”, published weeks after the killing of Brian Thompson, criticises United Healthcare and its founder Richard T. Burke. In September 2024, Welles played Farm Aid; he was introduced by Dave Matthews as “one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard in my life.” He performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in April 2025. He also performed two songs on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in November 2025: “Join ICE” and “Red”. Welles’s “Join ICE” has been described as “another step in the comeback of the protest song”.
Welles was honoured with the Spirit of Americana/Free Speech Award at the 2025 Americana Music Honours & Awards on September 10, 2025, presented in association with the First Amendment Center. He was also nominated for the Emerging Act of the Year award at the ceremony. Welles was nominated for four categories at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, which occurred in 2026: Best Folk Album for Under The Powerlines (April 24 – September 24), Best Americana Album for Middle, Best American Roots Song for “Middle”, and Best Americana Performance for “Horses”. Vulture has described his music as “A mix of old-fashioned folkie and trending-topic populism, delivered in hook based snippets on social media several times weekly”. He has been described as a modern Woody Guthrie.
