“The Pitt”'s Ned Brower First Found Indie Rock Fame with Rooney. Now, He's Returned to Music with Bloodwerk (Exclusive)

Ilana KaplanTue, June 2, 2026 at 6:46 PM UTC

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The Pitt star Ned Brower has teamed up with musician John E. Low for an electropop musical project

Together, they formed the band Bloodwerk, a name inspired by Brower's time working in the ER

"We're very much DIY'ing this thing right now, but it's great actually," the actor and musician tells PEOPLE

Before Ned Brower was thrust back into the limelight playing Nurse Jesse on The Pitt, he was a band guy.

In the early aughts, the actor, musician and real-life ER nurse found fame with the indie-rock outfit Rooney. But long before that, he cut his teeth at the epicenter of the '90s music explosion in his hometown of Seattle in bands as a kid. To some degree, it's that origin story that led him to his new electropop group Bloodwerk.

For the project, Brower, 47, enlisted his fellow Seattle native and friend of 10 years, film and TV composer John E. Low. Not only did Low have a similar connection with the city's music scene, but he was immersed in the industry himself as a member of the Capitol Records-signed '90s alt-rockers The Actual Tigers.

Teaming up as Bloodwerk has admittedly been refreshing for the duo. "The way we're doing it now totally reignited my passion for what made me start this in the first place," Brower tells PEOPLE over the phone. "It's the music creation with no rules and no other cooks in the kitchen, the way it was when we were kids."

Low, 48, notes that the "creative control" has been reinvigorating. "We haven't had to bend to the whims of a record label, a manager or an agent, so we're very much DIY-ing this thing right now," he says.

In March, Bloodwerk dropped their first pair of singles "Truth Will Tell" and "Sound of Mind" featuring Z Berg, introducing the project.

For their latest music video, "The Other Side," out Tuesday, June 2, Bloodwerk enlisted the help of friend and famed horror screenwriter-director Leigh Whannell to bring the horrors of the service industry to life.

Below, Brower and Low open up about the inspiration behind Bloodwerk, enlisting The Pitt star Irene Choi for the band's first music video and working with Whannell.

Ned Brower and John E. Low of Bloodwerk
Credit: Lucas Brower

PEOPLE: How did Bloodwerk begin, and did your time on The Pitt inspire this new musical project?

JOHN E. LOW: Ned and I went to the Hollywood Bowl to watch a show of a band we won't name, but the performance was lackluster, and we both were staring at each other like, "I felt like we could do a better job than this." We had done some work together on a previous project for an animated series [Central Park on Apple TV], so we had some experience working together, but this was a different enterprise because it was more just for us.

NED BROWER: I would add that we had a friendship for a long time, and were both musicians, but we were just social friends for 10 years before we ever tried working together. Since Rooney broke up, I took a break, and I'd started to get into electronic music. I started going to Burning Man five years ago and was like, "Oh, I finally understand electronic music in a new way that never interested me before," and wanted to try my hand at that.

Since John and my collaboration was so good on the first couple of TV projects that we did, I rang him up, and I was like, "What if we just made music with no constraints?" But I know I wanted it to be kind of electronic. Once we started working together, we had these really complementary skill sets. This also timed out with when I was working on season one [of The Pitt], and I was thrust back into showbusiness in a way. But it wasn't completely creatively fulfilling; it was creatively exciting because I was working with all these directors, writers and actors on this big project. But my part, especially in season one, was pretty limited to reading vital signs and just helping out. That also made me be like, "I need to make art again." And that's when John and I started talking about doing our own thing.

PEOPLE: The name Bloodwerk makes me think of Kraftwerk, but also, I have to ask, Ned, is it inspired at all by your time working in hospitals and on The Pitt?

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BROWER: Yeah, totally. So, I spend a lot of time working with different ER doctors when I'm not on The Pitt. I was on a shift at my clinic working with one of my doctor friends, and she's really cool. I was playing the music for her off my phone, and I think I actually had a handful of blood tubes in my hand that I'd just drawn from a patient, and she was like, "This music's really f---ing cool, man. I love this. What are you going to call this?" I was like, "I don't know. We haven't thought of a name yet." She didn't miss one beat [and] she goes, "You should call it 'Bloodwork.'" She just looked in my hand, and I was like, "Yeah, but we could spell it like Kraftwerk because it's electronic music." I'm not even a big Kraftwerk person, but I love them historically for their contributions to electronic music. So it was a one-two punch with no thought. It goes with the music in a weird way.

Ned Brower in Bloodwerk's 'The Other Side' music video
Credit: Bloodwerk/YouTube

PEOPLE: Your new music video for "The Other Side" was directed by horror great Leigh Whannell. How did you enlist him for this one?

BROWER: We've always been just social friends for many years before we were having all this success. So it's just one of these cool parallel paths where we became parents, same as John and I, and worked ahead in our craft. At one point last year when The Pitt season 1 was coming up, there was a giant billboard for The Pitt, and right next to it, there was a giant billboard for his movie, Wolf Man. Every day I'd drive to the studio and [be like], "Look at how far my friends and I have come. This is so awesome." I secretly hoped he would want to direct something one day, so we've always shared our music as we go, but I never asked. When he saw our first video, he really loved it and was like, "Mate, I'll actually direct your next video, man. Why haven't you asked me?" I was like, "I didn't want to bother you, but of course we've got to do that." Our first video was super fun to make, but it was very run-and-gun. This one's a proper production. He's like the modern-day master of horror. He created the Saw franchise, Insidious, and he made Wolf Man last year.

PEOPLE: What's the story behind your single "Sound of Mind"?

BROWER: "Sound of Mind" was really cool because we knew we wanted that to be a duet with a female. We tried a couple of different singers, but ultimately we landed on one of my old friends, Z Berg, who's amazing, and she's been in a bunch of great bands. I had already sung my track, but when I heard hers, it was so cool, and my tone didn't match. So, Z accidentally found the sound vocally for this project, and I re-sang my part to match her energy. Then, that was so cool that the track didn't hold up against the vocals, and John, without telling me, went back in and completely reverse-engineered the music under the vocals again. It totally took another turn and became what it is now, which I think is the blueprint of what our sound has become moving forward.

PEOPLE: Irene Choi who plays Joy Kwon on The Pitt starred in your "Truth Will Tell" video. How did that happen?

BROWER: That was a really cool kind of accident. Irene and I are friends. She is a musician, also, and we have a lot of friends in common. We were talking on the phone, and I told her what we were about to shoot that first video, and she called a day or two later and was like, "Hey, would you mind if I came and shadowed?" I thought that was a funny term because I was like, "Well, this isn't a SAG-AFTRA production. But we certainly can use a hand because we're making this up as we go along." We didn't really have anything happening in the first scene, so I was like, "Would you want to be on camera?" And she was like, "Yeah, sure." I was like, "Well, what if you're my girlfriend?" And she wasn't creeped out by that, so that's what we did, and it was fun. There was definitely a moment where The Pitt fan universe went totally insane. I think they saw the stills and thought the paparazzi had captured us on a date, which was secretly what I hoped would happen because I love media manipulation. But we're actually just friends.

John E. Low and Ned Brower of Bloodwerk in 'The Other Side' music video
Credit: Bloodwerk/YouTube

PEOPLE: Which artists are you most influenced by when it comes to Bloodwerk?

BROWER: There's a handful. Justice, I would even put Tame Impala [and] Empire of the Sun [in there]. We really wanted to do [this project] without copying any one of these things, but do an L.A. representation of the dance-pop indie space. While I want to make dance music, I can't stop until there's a good top line, and John can't stop until there's good chord changes and interesting arrangements, because we were band guys first. Over time I started to realize '80s new wave is just baked into my hard drive, like New Order, Pet Shop Boys. It may not seem as obvious, but I think our music has a lot in common with those '80s new wave songs that had really memorable anthemic melodies, combined with modern EDM production. I think that's the mission statement of our project.

PEOPLE: Does Bloodwerk have a full-length album on the way?

LOW: I mean, that is the goal. We have an album's worth of music. Instead of putting out one album of 10 songs, we're taking a slightly different tack and releasing them two at a time, then maybe a remix of something and then another track. So ultimately it will be an album, it's just that the rollout will feel a bit different.

BROWER: And part of that's just adapting to the attention economy. But I also can imagine a future where, if we find a great partner that gets what we're doing, we can actually set aside the time for a straight month to put all of our other jobs on hold, go somewhere in the woods and focus on an album.

on People

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”