Zoe Bockhorst, or better known as Winefred RT, traces her musical beginnings back to her bedroom. “When people ask me this question,” she began, “I think about being in high school, lying on my bed and listening to The Mountain Goats’ The Sunset Tree. I don’t remember specific moments, just being overtaken by the emotion.”

Since then, she has released multiple singles since 2023 and grown her audience to more than 3,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Her music consists of folk rock gems, or in her own words, “It’s guitar music where the words are the most important.”

It’s her lyrics that make Winefred RT’s audience feel that same emotion she felt all those years ago. “I usually start with the words I was thinking of, and then the rest of my life creeps in,” she said. Her songs are like short stories—vivid and intimate, enough to make you feel like she’s speaking directly to you.

“A lot of the time, a phrase will pop into my head, some sentence or idea I find interesting, something that just sounds nice in its pattern,” she explained. “When I sit down to write a song about something, it’s usually bad. But sometimes I need to do that to process a thought, to purge the system and get those feelings out. Most of the time, though, I just start with a phrase.”

The biggest song from Winefred RT right now is “Cheri, God, Online,” a tender look at life and love told through the story of a 60-year-old veteran who posts a YouTube comment about his late wife. Although the song feels so authentic, Winefred RT admits that it was made up. “Not one specific instance [inspired this song]. I know we have all seen those YouTube comments before so it was inspired by real events but not one specific one,” she confessed.

She continued, “I’m really happy that people like that song. I had it in my back pocket for awhile, and I always had the idea in my head that it’s 18 verses. I loved writing it, and I thought it was really good, but I didn’t think it was a song that would be fun to play or listen to at a show. I feel silly now for thinking that because some of the songs I love the most are exactly like that. There are Bob Dylan or Tom Waits songs that are super long, and it’s verse after verse telling a story. That’s the most impactful thing.”

Winefred RT even channels artists like Dylan and Waits into her music through cover songs. One song that blends in with her catalog is Waits 1978 track, “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis.” “I think that covers are awesome, and I love to sing songs that I think are great songs,” she explained. “As artists and writers, we don’t exist in a vacuum.”

Her most recent single, “Glove,” channels that same storytelling experience she is known for, while also paying homage to the band that inspired this all for her. On an October 22 Instagram post, Winefred RT stated, “When I was 15, my dad showed me the song by The Mountain Goats ‘The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton.’…this new song ‘Glove’ is my contribution to the legacy of writing-it-then-immediately-recording-with-your-shitty-microphone.” It’s her way of nodding back to the music that raised her, embracing imperfection as part of the process.

As she prepares the release of her first album, Anything Better To Do, she says it will be released sometime in the next 5 months. 

“Everything that I have out so far was either recorded in my bedroom or my friend’s home recording studio,” she said. “[But for Anything Better To Do,] I recorded in Narwhal Studios in Chicago with my friend Noah Roth. They are a recording engineer, and they were working there at the time [with] my friend Henry True. We produced the record all together…That was ten days in the studio when we made that record.”

For this new album, fans can also expect to hear a new sound from Winefred RT. “The sound is definitely different than the rest of my music that has been released, which is exciting to me,” she said. “That’s thanks to Noah and Henry. People can expect to hear all the words…and a bunch of distorted guitar and autotune.”

Photos taken from Winefred RT https://www.winefredrt.com/ | Interviewed on October 14, 2025