Madrid-based indie rock band Hinds talk to Atwood Magazine about the obstacles they overcame to create their new album ‘VIVA HINDS’ and their plans for world domination.
Stream: ‘VIVA HINDS’ (singles) – Hinds
This album is a chant of resilience and survival and proof that it’s worth it. Life is hard, but it’s worth it.
Hinds have never been afraid of a challenge.
And the indie rock duo of Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote have faced plenty of challenges in the last few years. Since the release of their 2020 album Prettiest Curse, they changed management teams, parted ways with their record label, and lost their regular bass player and drummer.
So, what did they do? Cosials and Perrote took some time to regroup – and then they started writing and recording what would become VIVA HINDS, their stunning new album, out September 6 via Lucky Number Music.
When the duo started writing the songs on the record, they weren’t even sure if it would ever be released. “This album has had the most defiant process of all of them,” Cosials tells Atwood Magazine. “It’s been more work than any other album, and it’s the first album we’ve done with zero expectations. But somehow, we tried to take advantage of that.”
“We didn’t know how or if the album was going to be released,” Perrote adds. “We just knew we had to make an album. It was the only thing in our control.”
“And I think we were very welcoming with every feeling that we were having,” Cosials says of this difficult period in their careers and how it impacted their creative process.
The album’s title comes from another obstacle Hinds had to overcome earlier in their career. The original name of the band was Deers, but Cosials and Perrote had to change it because of the threat of a lawsuit from a band with a similar name. “Now we prefer the name Hinds,” Perrote says. “But back then, we hated it because we were forced to change the name.”
But the band’s fans embraced the new name and would start chants of “Viva Hinds” at the group’s shows. The chant became the perfect title for an album that faced so many obstacles along the way. “We’ve had to work a lot and go through hell to be able to write, record, and release this album,” Perrote says. “The title fits perfectly because this album is a chant of resilience and survival and proof that it’s worth it. Life is hard, but it’s worth it.”
“It’s a celebration,” Cosials agrees.
Making it through their struggles was at least a little easier because of the close bond Perrote and Cosials have.
Beyond being best friends, they have an unmatched musical chemistry that helps gives Hinds its unique sound. Cosials and Perrote show vocal duties, and throughout their songs, they will exchange lines, like a rock-n-roll call and response. In fact, they begin VIVA HINDS in this way, with Cosials singing the opening lines of “Hi, How Are You?”
Hi, how are you?
I was feeling that the room was painted blue
Like a very cold November day, but hey
We’re in June
Perrote then sings the second half of the verse, responding to the question posed in the opening line:
Fine, thanks and you?
Have you ever taken someone else’s truth
would you rather be replaced or be reused
For someone new
In the chorus, the two singers join voices, and the distortion on the guitars gets kicked up a notch:
Well, if the skies are falling down
And when I’m done crying my eyes out
You and me we won’t remember the last time
That we fell in love with someone
Cosials and Perrote have had this instinct for how to play off of each other’s musical energy since the first time they sang together. The band’s origins date back to when they went on a trip together with a group of friends. When they got to the hostel they were staying in, they started passing the guitar they had brought back and forth, playing Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.”
“As soon as we started singing it, we started saying ‘why don’t you sing this part, and I’ll sing this part,’ and that’s what hooked us,” Perrote says. “We enjoyed doing that so much that there was no doubt.”
“It really felt very special,” Cosials says with a nod.
When writing the songs for Viva Hinds, the band found inspiration by spending time in different places.
Often, the setting around them would end up leading them to try new things. “The environment is really important for what we write,” Perrote says. “It’s not the same to write in the summer as it is to write in the winter.” And they wrote in a lot of different places for this album – with writing sessions in Spain, the UK, and Los Angeles.
“The Bed, the Room, the Rain, and You,” one of the album’s quieter, laid-back tracks, came into being when the neighbors of the house the band was renting asked them to quiet down.
“We said ‘okay let’s turn everything down, and let’s be quiet,” Perrote recalls. “And that’s the reason we started doing those melodies that are so comforting and soothing—it’s actually because the environment didn’t let us yell and scream. It’s very exciting to drop us in a different scenario and see what’s going to happen.”
The production choices on “The Bed, the Room, the Rain, and You” mirror the space it was created in. Spacious guitars drenched in reverb accompany the nonchalant vocal delivery as the duo sing of an all-encompassing love:
The bed is you
the room is you
The rain is you
The blackbirds, too
I smile for you
Your eyes are blue
Let me know where I can find you
Writing this song also helped Cosials and Perrote regain their confidence after the string of setbacks they faced. “This was the song that helped me realize we were going to have an album,” Cosials says. “When we wrote this one, I knew we still had the spark.”
The idea of putting themselves in distinctive physical spaces to spark different creative instincts carried over into the recording of VIVA HINDS. “We built studios in the living rooms of two different houses in France,” Cosials says of the recording process. “One of the houses was in the countryside, and the other house was in front of the Atlantic Ocean.”
The album was influenced by the people Perrote and Cosials worked with as well. The spark for “Boom Boom Back,” one of the album’s most danceable tracks, came from a guitar petal Sean Silverman, who cowrote the song, showed the band. The effect makes an electric guitar sound more like a synth, and it appears on the massive instrumental hook that opens “Boom Boom Back.”
“As soon as we heard that effect, we fell in love,” Perrote said. “It’s a very different sound than anything we’ve tried before, and it opened a big window for us.”
The song’s infectious hooks and undeniable swagger are impossible to ignore, and the track is further brought to life by a feature from renowned singer, songwriter and producer Beck. Cosials and Perrote tell a tale of a party or a carefree night out on the town:
If you wanna fall in love in a bar tonight
Do you wanna fall in love
with a broken heart?
do you wanna ride? Ride in my Mirage?
Do you wanna be the one
that feels the “boom boom” back?
“Boom Boom Back” came together quickly on the first day Cosials and Perrote met Sean Silverman, but not every song on Viva Hinds was that easy to write. “Coffee,” the first single Hinds released from the new album, was written over a much longer period of time.
“‘Coffee’ is pure joy, and it’s honest, it’s raw,” Perrote says. “But we didn’t think it was going to be a single at all. Suddenly all of our team, they were insisting that it had to be a single. And they insisted so much that we ended up trusting them, and it ended up being the perfect comeback.”
“Coffee” showcases Hinds’ lyrical mastery with its attention-grabbing opening lines:
I like black coffee and cigarettes
And flowers from boys
that I’m not sleeping with
I like trees when they let go of their leaves
They’re so wise, they get rid of their shit
Another unique element of Hinds’ songwriting is the way they will shift seamlessly from English to Spanish and back, even within the same track.
For the bilingual songwriters, this is something that comes naturally to them as they work on a new song.
“Sometimes the song is asking for it,” Cosials says of moving between languages in their lyrics.
“We just flow with wherever the song is going,” Perrote agrees. “The two languages are so different—the melodies, the sonority, our voices sound so different. So we just know.”
“In the end, for our music, the language is another tool,” Cosials adds. “So we feel very rich in tools.”
VIVA HINDS also contains the band’s first song with lyrics entirely in Spanish – the propulsive “En Forma.” The duo repeat the chorus’s single line in unison, then in harmony, accompanied by jangling guitars and an energetic drum beat:
Mírame, no puedo más
(Look at me, I can’t take it anymore)
Touring and playing live is a part of the band’s DNA, and their fearless attitude comes out in their joyful, high-energy live shows.
Hinds have toured on multiple continents, opened for acts like Coldplay and The Strokes, and played some of the biggest festivals in the world, including Glastonbury and Coachella.
“Come to a Hinds show, and we will change your life,” Cosials says with a laugh.
“We are so happy when we are on stage, and it’s contagious,” Perrote says. “The fact that we have this ability to try and help people forget about everything outside of the venue and have everyone connecting and feeling the same thing – it’s pure magic. You can’t compare live music to anything else.”
“We’re very punk people,” Perrote continues. “And I think it’s quite special to see four women on stage doing whatever they want, yelling, sweating, jumping with the crowd, and just breaking the rules and modes that we’re supposed to stay in.”
The energy and tenacity Hinds brings to their live shows also bleeds into how they approach their careers. When asked what comes next for the band after the release of VIVA HINDS, the answer is simple.
“World domination,” Cosials and Perrote both say, almost in unison.
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© Dario Vazquez
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