British indie rock band Hollow Hand find magic in the everyday on “Here Are the Tulips,” a shaggy, hypnotic reverie that turns an ordinary bus ride into a rush of memory, longing, and possibility. A disarming highlight from their fourth album, ‘Wish Road South,’ it captures Hollow Hand at their loosest and most alive, letting instinct, intimacy, and everyday detail bloom into a world all their own.

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Stream: “Here Are the Tulips” – Hollow Hand

There’s not much better than life amongst the flowers on an early summer’s afternoon.

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A whole world of effortless cool blooms from the loose poetry of one ordinary morning.

Hollow Hand’s restless, hypnotic “Here Are the Tulips” turns a bus ride, a half-read story, and a mind wandering toward flowers, memory, and the future into a broodingly bright alternative rock reverie. Guitars jangle and glide over a feelgood pulse while Max Kinghorn-Mills sings with an aching nonchalance, making every stray thought land like part of a private mythology.

Catchy, unhurried, and alive with the shaggy charm of ‘90s British rock, the song finds magic in the everyday without ever forcing the glow.

“Eight in the morning,
just when I’m yawning
Catching the bus,
now I’m reading a story
The words that you’re
writing mustn’t be boring
Mustn’t be long words
where is my story? Yeah

Released June 3 via Loose Music / Soundly, “Here Are the Tulips” was the first preview of Hollow Hand’s fourth album, Wish Road South, released September 4. The record follows 2023’s Your Own Adventure and arrives after a period of motion and reassessment for Kinghorn-Mills, whose recent years included touring and collaborating with Caitlin Rose and Aoife Nessa Frances, as well as supporting MJ Lenderman across Europe. He returned to Brighton creatively energized but dissatisfied with the version of the album waiting on his computer. Rather than keep polishing music that no longer excited him, he set much of it aside and began again.

The reset began with “Here Are the Tulips.” Working alongside drummer Oliver Newton and bassist Leo Clarke in their shared Brighton studio, Kinghorn-Mills abandoned the isolation of his earlier bedroom-recording process and captured the song live as a trio. The performance’s looseness gave Hollow Hand the answer they had been searching for: A sound built around instinct, interaction, and the tiny imperfections that reveal musicians listening to one another in real time. The track became both a creative breakthrough and a blueprint for the album that followed.

“This was the first track Leo, Oli, and I recorded, sat down as a trio, recording live together,” Kinghorn-Mills tells Atwood Magazine. “Hearing back the core recording, I realized that things were going to work out fine this way, and it opened up a vital pathway to continue working on the rest of the LP. I think ‘Here Are the Tulips’ just feels good as an introduction to how I’m feeling about recording music right now.”

Its opening verse places us directly inside Kinghorn-Mills’ morning routine, but the familiar scene quickly slips its earthly coordinates.

A sleepy commute becomes a meditation on storytelling itself as he considers what makes words worth reading and wonders where his own story might be hiding. The chorus arrives like a thought spoken before it can be tidied up: “Ooh baby, I could write another song / And I’ll call it ‘Too Slow,’ maybe / I know that I’m writing something about you.” The title remains uncertain, but the song’s emotional subject never does. Whoever “you” may be, they are already present in every wandering image.

ooh baby
I could write another song
and I’ll call it
too slow maybe
i know that I’m writing
something about you, yeah

“Here Are the Tulips” appears to discover its meaning while it moves. Kinghorn-Mills asks where joy lives and what the future holds, then follows his imagination from a river to the ocean, from flowers in the soil to Venus and the blinding sun. These images share no obvious chronology, yet they belong together through feeling: affection, curiosity, memory, and the half-conscious associations that surface when the mind is free to roam. “You are the picture / You are the stars through a perfect mirror” turns the unnamed subject into both a person and a way of seeing, while the tulips evoke something tactile and inherited – hands in the earth, following what a mother once showed you.

“Now that I read the words back, ‘Here Are the Tulips’ appears to be a song about writing a song,” Kinghorn-Mills reflects. “I feel like I’m happiest with my lyrics when they’re simple. The more labored, the further away they feel to me. These verses contain treasured vignettes, a series of special memories that I think back to often.”

where is the joy and how is the future?
fast like a river I ran to the ocean
I am the ocean, you are the picture
you are the stars through a perfect mirror

red as a flower, well here are the tulips
digging in the ground
like your mother showed you,
I’m on the planet that’s closest to Venus,
stared at the sun ’til I couldn’t see you, yeah

Such simplicity allows the song’s deeper ache to remain in motion rather than settling into explanation. Its rhythm keeps nudging forward while the guitars hover, curl, and flash around Kinghorn-Mills’ voice, creating a constant push and pull between momentum and reflection. Newton and Clarke give the track its feelgood stride, yet the performance retains enough friction to keep its sweetness from becoming weightless. Kinghorn-Mills is the perfect center of gravity: His delivery is melodic and bruised, carrying longing with a dry, conversational ease that makes the song’s more vulnerable questions seem to escape almost by accident.

There is a flash of ‘90s British alternative rock in that balance – the same gift Blur possessed for turning passing observations, emotional evasions, and ordinary English life into something slyly anthemic. Hollow Hand channel that spirit through a warmer, earthier lens, preserving the background noise and breathing room of the original session while Clarence Clarity’s mix gives every hook a subtly radiant edge. The song sounds lived-in and immediate, as though we have wandered into the room at the precise moment the band realize how good it can be.

“This recording feels very free,” Kinghorn-Mills shares. “You can hear background noise from the session; the pressure is off and we’re relaxed. Clarence Clarity brought so much to the sound with his mixing on this album. We’ve played in bands together for years, and by now we don’t really need to talk much to understand our goal.”

“In between touring, I’d been struggling to find the sound I wanted on this album. There are a lot of rejected recordings on my computer. Listening back to ‘Here Are the Tulips’ for the first time, I realized it was exactly what I was looking for. We recorded the core of the album very quickly after that, so I suppose this song represents a creative breakthrough and important progress. That’s why it sounds positive to me.”

That turning point gives Wish Road South its route forward. The album takes its title from a bus stop Kinghorn-Mills passed on his way to the studio, grounding the record in the lonely early mornings and incremental progress of its creation. Yet the name also carries a more spiritual sense of searching – for direction, a guardian angel, or the elusive knowledge that one has finally arrived somewhere worthwhile. “Here Are the Tulips” captures that quest in miniature, moving through uncertainty without losing its appetite for beauty. Its everyday details do not diminish the mystery; they are where the mystery lives.

Now heard in full, Wish Road South makes the song’s role as a blueprint even clearer.

Kinghorn-Mills sees the album’s opening three songs almost as one continuous piece, but the record keeps widening its world from there: “Heavy Metal T-Shirt” turns a thrift-store curiosity into bright, hooky power pop threaded with family distance and memory, while “Drinking With Judy” tears through Los Angeles with a propulsive, slightly off-kilter charge. By the time “A Gentle Place” asks for “a gentle place / to lay my head and get off the road,” all that movement has narrowed into a plainspoken need for rest. The moods shift, but the album keeps returning to the same discovery that unlocked “Here Are the Tulips” – Hollow Hand sound most alive when instinct gets there before overthinking.

“I just want to be honest with my songwriting,” Kinghorn-Mills says. “Maybe some of the tracks are sad, but it’s real, and that’s what I need when I write a song. When it comes to words, I don’t want to work on them; it shouldn’t be toilsome. In quantum physics, you can never understand a moving particle because observing it changes it so fundamentally. For me, writing feels this way. You have to shoot from the hip, and if you don’t, then you’re going to miss. Here I am, everyone – pleased to meet you.”

Ooh, baby
I could write another song
and I’ll call it
too slow maybe
I know that I’m writing
something about you

Ooh, baby
I could write another song
and I’ll call it
you know maybe
I know that I’m writing
something about you, yeah

At once a travelogue, a love song, and a portrait of inspiration returning, “Here Are the Tulips” is alternative gold. It carries the melodic immediacy of a song you’ve known for years and the live-wire spark of one being discovered before your ears. Its ache hides beneath the bounce, its questions linger inside the hooks, and its effortlessly stylish, irresistibly English arrangement makes a routine commute feel like a portal into memory, desire, and possibility.

By the end, eight in the morning feels like the beginning of everything – a minor miracle with a major hook.

That little morning miracle became the doorway to Wish Road South. Below, Kinghorn-Mills opens up about the difficult search that led him there – and the moment Hollow Hand finally stopped forcing the music and found their way forward.

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:: stream/purchase Wish Road South here ::

:: connect with Hollow Hand here ::

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A CONVERSATION WITH HOLLOW HAND

Hollow Hand (Max Kinghorn-Mills): I hope people can hear how I feel in the music, I don’t really know how to talk about the process all that well, they should come see us play. I’ve been recording my songs since I was in school, I made the first Hollow Hand album in my bedroom, it’s kinda lonely but also cool. In 2015 I put out ‘Ancestral Lands’ on cassette in the UK / Ongakubaka Records in Virginia, USA. There are plenty of reasons not to make music but I’ve never stopped, I suppose I always remember how it feels worthwhile on a personal level. “Here lies Hollow Hand… and why not?”

Hollow Hand: If you’re into twang and home recording then ‘Ancestral Lands’ is probably the one for you. I was listening to a lot of vintage folk rock at that time, likely channeling my pagan heritage and finding a way to commit it to tape. For me, each album has a personality, demands and lifetime of its own. They’re like old friends – you don’t always see eye to eye on every detail, but you do appreciate each other, it’s good to know they’re around. There’s a short film on YouTube where you can visit the shed where we recorded ‘Star Chamber.’ I’ve been very pleased to record some ‘Lagniappe Sessions’ for Aquarium Drunkard, they’re very fun, I really love to make music with Aoife Nessa Frances – so check that collaborative one out. You know, if you want deeper cuts then visit www.cosmicoceanpress.com and ask me about vinyl.

Hollow Hand: Your Own Adventure was the last album I made in a bedroom studio before I moved into our little space in Brighton, shared with Oliver Newton (who drums on these last two records). As it’s the most recent album (until the new one in September), you tend to feel that time pretty acutely. Like, I can remember all of the difficulties I faced recording there with my girlfriend, all those beautiful things too. We actually recorded a number of full length albums in that space, I cherish the memories, it was a real artistic space that we shared together. We toured the songs form that album more than any other, so Your Own Adventure is pretty formative in terms of where we’re at now, as a group.

Hollow Hand: Right now, if I think of the perennials, it’s Syd Barrett, Robert Wyatt, Shirley Collins, The Watersons, Richard Thompson, Nirvana too. I listen to a lot of dark ambient music (I run a fantasy tape label: cosmicoceansound.bandcamp.com), but we could talk about this all night. With the newest Hollow Hand album, I feel like I’m in a position where I have access to more sounds, a better understanding of production. We got to tour the last album a fair bit and so with that experience I’ve come to realise how much more there is to being in a band than just the recording process. I thought of these songs mainly as live pieces, something I’ve never had much of an option to consider in the past. It’s hard to road test your songs when you’re trying to get away with making records amongst your neighbours and dodging noise complaints.

Hollow Hand: I just want to be honest with my songwriting. Maybe some of the tracks are sad, but it’s real and that’s what I need when I write a song. When it comes to words, I don’t want to work on them, it shouldn’t be toilsome. In quantum physics you can never understand a moving particle because observing it changes it so fundamentally. For me, writing feels this way, you have to shoot from the hip and if you don’t then you’re gonna miss. Here I am everyone, pleased to meet you.

Hollow Hand: Finding a track listing that works can be tough but this time I knew how the album should start long before we’d finished recording. The first three songs on the album flow together, I almost see them as one track. Wow, maybe I’ve finally got a ‘suite’ here. This was the first track Leo (Clarke), Oli (Newton) and I recorded, sat down as a trio, recording live together. Hearing back the core recording, I realised that things were going to work out fine this way and it opened up a vital pathway to continue working on the rest of the LP. I think ‘Here Are The Tulips’ just feels good as an introduction to how I’m feeling about recording music right now.

Hollow Hand: Hey, thank you! Maybe we’re from the same part of the world. This recording feels very free, you can hear background noise from the session, the pressure is off and we’re relaxed. Clarence Clarity brought so much to the sound with his mixing on this album, we’ve played in bands together for years and by now we don’t really need to talk much to understand our goal. With experience you can afford to think about the process less directly, good stuff happens to you when you stop looking for it. In between touring, I’d been struggling to find the sound I wanted on this album, there are a lot of rejected recordings on my computer. Listening back to ‘Here Are The Tulips’ for the first time, I realised it was exactly what I was looking for. We recorded the core of the album very quickly after that, so I suppose this song represents a creative breakthrough and important progress, that’s why it sounds positive to me.

Hollow Hand: Now that I read the words back, “Here Are The Tulips” appears to be a song about writing a song. I feel like I’m happiest with my lyrics when they’re simple. The more laboured, the further away they feel to me. These verses contain treasured vignettes, a series of special memories that I think back to often. We made a video for this song at an allotment in Brighton, currently under the stewardship of Oli (Newton) and his partner Hannah Clare. There’s not much better than life amongst the flowers on an early summer’s afternoon.

Hollow Hand: I don’t know if the album contains any specific cohesion other than representing a time and place for me as a musician. The title of the album refers to my bus route. In between my part-time work, I’d get up early, straight onto the bus and into our studio room to overdub and make progress. It was a pretty lonely time (it usually is), but I’d read a lot on the way in and I took comfort in the knowledge when I was finally onto something. I’m my hardest critic, I should know.

Hollow Hand: In the past I’d think about ‘our sound’ more. I think maybe I’ve never been less inspired by ‘tech’ until now. The world is so distracted, it seems like no-one can actually concentrate. The more time I can spend away from a screen, the better. In terms of the type of music I’m making, I feel most excited when I hear a musician do so much with so little. It’s the way ‘Coney Island Baby’ sounds, raw and simplified, it seems to me that the style of that album is rightfully left to the songwriting alone. That’s what feels good to me – no trends, no fashion. I’m excited about removing guitar pedals completely, a few remain but I’m working on it.

Hollow Hand: I can’t really worry about whether people like my songs, all I know is that I’ve gotten closer to where I want to be this time. It’s always been a very personal journey. If there’s an audience for this then maybe touring can get easier. I’ve never done this for anyone apart from myself, it’s the only way I can feel that the music is honest, if I wanted to compromise I’d pursue a normal job. I’ve been in bands since I was in school, I learned pretty early on that I’m not able to change my taste for anyone else. Every time I make a record I’m learning, this is another example of how it feels to be me, it ain’t always easy. When you do finally release the music, there’s a sense of relief. It’s like bringing someone else in on a secret you’ve been keeping, you can be open again.

Hollow Hand:

• Ora Cogan: Hard Hearted Woman
• Bryan O’Leary: Tranquility In Tureencahill
• Cruise Control: Time Is An Angel
• Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears: Inner Principles
• Friendship: Caveman Wakes Up
• Tracey Nelson: Hercules
• Sunken Grove & The Herbalists: Forest Floor Diptych
• Magic Tuber Stringband: Heavy Water

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:: stream/purchase Wish Road South here ::

:: connect with Hollow Hand here ::

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Stream: “Here Are the Tulips” – Hollow Hand

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