The Grammy-nominated music producer and engineer who thinks Philly is ‘indie music capital of the world’

When Will Yip was 12 years old, his future flashed before his eyes.

“The second I walked into the studio I knew that this is what I wanted,” said the Grammy-nominated music producer and engineer, sitting in the control room at Memory Music Studios, the new recording studio he’s built in the Whitman section of South Philadelphia.

“I remember the smell,” he said, recalling a visit to Ground Control Recording in Northeast Philly, where he and a friend paid $20 an hour to record two songs in 1999. “I always loved playing drums. But I was like: 'This is cool!’ I still remember that feeling.”

That enthusiasm has guided Yip, beginning with the days when he was convincing bands like Philly hardcore quartet Blacklisted to record (for free) in his mother’s basement while still a student at Central High.

It’s stayed with him through two decades as one of the busiest producer-engineers in the music business at Studio 4 in Conshohocken, where he went to work at 19. He has co-owned the studio with mentor Phil Nicolo since 2012.

And Yip’s nonstop work ethic and command of his craft — “Will has a gift,” said Nicolo — has made him a go-to collaborator for acclaimed bands like Philly’s Mannequin Pussy and Baltimore’s Turnstile.

Yip recorded Turnstile’s breakthrough Never Enough at uber-producer Rick Rubin’s Los Angeles mansion in 2024.

Citing this recent work with Turnstile as well as rock and shoegaze bands Scowl, Die Spitz, and Doylestown’s Superheaven, music and pop culture site Uproxx named Yip 2025’s “indie producer of the year.”

Yip’s teaming with Turnstile has resulted in five Grammy nominations for the Brendan Yates-fronted hardcore-adjacent band.

If Turnstile triumphs in the rock album category, Yip — who was nominated for his work on Pittsburgh band Code Orange’s Underneath in 2021 — will come home from California with his first golden gramophone. (The other four nods are technical nominations for Yip. “If they win those,” he said, “They’ll give me a plaque.”)

But even if Yip returns empty-handed from the Grammys — which will be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount+ at 8 p.m. Sunday from the Crypto.com Arena in LA — he’ll be coming back to his already up-and-running state of the art studio, where he’s turned a longtime dream into reality.

“Everyone is like, ‘Bro, why are you building a million-dollar studio? Aren’t studios dying?’” said the producer, who turns 39 this month.

“They are. But my brand of music, that I’m lucky enough to work with, is flourishing. Rock is back. I’ve waited my entire life for this, for people to want electric guitars. I’ve felt it bubbling for the last 10 years. And now it’s happening.”

At Studio 4 — which was headquarters to 1990s hip-hop label Ruffhouse Records, home to the Fugees, Cypress Hill, and Lauryn Hill — Yip has stayed busy.

How busy? A 2019 profile on the Grammy website was headlined: “Philly Producer/Engineer Will Yip Works Harder than You.” Muso, the music industry website that tracks creator credits, ranks Yip as the 88th most active producer, alive or dead, with 37,116 credits.

“I opened a studio because bands need to come to Philadelphia, and I was running out of space,” said Yip, who also co-owns Doom, the metal bar and restaurant around the corner from Franklin Music Hall.

“It was my dream to build a studio. But I wasn’t going to do one until it made sense. We were very calculated with what we were doing. I’m booked through 2027.”

Taking visitors on an early morning tour of the 7,500-square-foot facility before Southern California rock band Movements arrived for a session, he showed off Memory Music’s four rooms to record and mix music.

Storage rooms are hung with scores of electric guitars, neatly shelved snare drums, and stacks of Marshall amps. Lounges are equipped with an impressive bourbon-centric whiskey bar, pool table, comfy couches, and Street Fighter II and NFL Blitz video games.

Yip, who is living with his wife, Christine, and toddler son, Milo, in Center City while they house shop, is a passionate Philly sports fan who owns the world’s largest collection of game-worn Phillies jerseys.

“I collect things. I have eight Scott Kingery rookie jerseys,” he said, laughing at himself.

On a recent visit, while Yip worked with Movements in Memory Music’s main room, producer Steph Marziano, who grew up in Philly and lives in London, was next door with Brooklyn indie songwriter Kevin Devine. Atlanta rapper Kenny Mason was due in later in the week.

“I needed a place in Philly to work out of,” said Marziano, who teamed with Hayley Williams on “Parachute” on Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party.

That LP is nominated for best alternative music album this year. The award will most likely be given away in the pre-telecast ceremony, which will stream from the Peacock Theater in LA starting at 3:30 p.m. on grammys.com and the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel.

“This is my new spot,” Marziano said of Memory Music. “Honestly, I love this place. I’m never even working in New York again.”

Yip was born in New York and moved to Philadelphia at age 1. His parents had escaped Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution by swimming from China to Hong Kong before immigrating to the United States.

His father co-owned Ocean City Restaurant in Chinatown, but never wanted Yip or his older brother to work there.

His parents hoped Yip would go to Penn, but enraptured by The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, recorded by Nicolo and his sibling Joe — known as the Butcher Bros. — Yip had a higher aspiration: to work at Studio 4.

So he went to Temple to study recording with Phil Nicolo. When he inquired about helping out at the studio, he got valuable advice he now often shares: “Just show up.”

“I drove to Conshohocken that day. I was so nervous. There was a Brazilian band there. I felt like I was in Disneyland.”

“He showed up, and he started doing stuff,” said Nicolo, who still co-owns Studio 4 and Studio 4 Vinyl, an LP pressing plant based in Coatesville.

“And then he started saying, ‘Hey, if I clean out this room can I use it on the weekend?’ He started bringing bands in there, and on Monday morning, he’d hand me a roll of twenties. And it was like, ‘Dude, you can come in whenever you want!’”

Nicolo said Yip’s productions, on which he is frequently also credited as a cowriter and drummer, are marked by “an aggressive rock sound, but with a style and an emotion and a musicality that you don’t often hear in quote unquote modern music, that seems kind of AI. That first time I heard that Turnstile record on WXPN, I was like ‘I bet this is Will.’ And it was.”

In 2021, when six women of Asian descent were killed at spas in the Atlanta area, Yip raised $100,000 through a memorabilia raffle, donating the money to the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Community Fund.

“I’m around great people all the time that support me, but I’ve always felt alone in being Asian in this genre, in this field, that from top to bottom is white male-dominated,” he told The Inquirer at the time. “But my friends and brothers, they came immediately and said, ‘We want to stand with you.’ And that meant the world to me.”

Now, he says, “I’m so proud of how much our little sector of the rock community has strived to improve inclusivity, especially this past decade. Twenty-five years ago, you would never find an Asian-fronted rock band, but today, you’re starting to see legit Asian rock stars like Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, and Turnstile. I’m confident it’ll only continue to grow.”

Yip’s collaborations tend to be long running. Scranton’s Tigers Jaw, whose new Lost on You is due in March, has worked with Yip on all of their albums since 2014’s Charmer. New Yip-produced music by Scranton pop-punk band the Menzingers is also due later this year.

“Will is such a detail guy,” said Tigers Jaw’s Ben Walsh. “Every detail in the new studio is meticulously planned out. And the stuff he suggests come from a place of understanding. He’s just very good at what feels natural and creatively fulfilling for the people he’s working with.”

“I’m a song guy,” Yip said. “I don’t look at myself as a sound nerd,” he added, gesturing to the staggering amount of gear he’s assembled. “But I want all the tools I can possibly have to be great at building songs.”

Jesse Ito, the acclaimed Philly chef who co-owns Royal Sushi & Izakaya, where Yip is a regular and often brings bands, calls his friend “the ultimate hype man.”

“Will just makes everybody around him feel so good about themselves. Even though we do different things, we understand each other about the grind and the growth and what it takes at this level.

“He doesn’t drink coffee,” Ito said. “If he drank coffee I think he would explode. He’s just so naturally hyped.”

And nothing comes more natural to Yip than hyping the city where he’s built his new musical home.

“Philly is the indie music capital of the world,” Yip said. “I’ll stand by that. And I want people to see how awesome and investable and easy it is to live in Philly and make music, and enjoy life in Philly. I want to build the culture. To give people a reason to come to Philly. And to stay in Philly.”