Hinds

Spanish garage-rockers Hinds have been relentless since bursting onto the scene in 2014. Formed in 2011 by Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote, the duo added Ade Martin and Amber Grimbergen, morphing into a hugely successful quartet, headlining world tours and festival sets while collaborating with everyone from Steve Madden to Pixar. Their second album, I Don’t Run, out now on Mom+Pop records, is a departure from the band’s proclivity for metaphor, instead facing their subjects head-on with blunt bravery and honest lyrics. I spoke with guitarist and co-lead vocalist Ana on the phone before the group’s show in Philly, promoting the release of I Don’t Run.

Q: You guys are originally from Madrid—how would you contrast the scene there to the American music scene? How have both influenced you?

A: They’re totally, totally, different. The scene [in Madrid]—the thing is, it’s a really tiny scene, really strong, and basically we all know each other. Ade lives with the guy that produced our first record, I live with the guy who just designed the cover of Los Nastys, which is another band that’s from [Madrid]; we’re all really related and we all help each other. What you guys have here in the States is just crazy, like just crazy compared to Spain because you guys really promote music to your kids—like in school they teach you what music is and the history of music, and everything is so much more respectful—you really consider it part of the culture, as a beautiful thing, and in Spain it is not that way as much. But I don’t know, I still like it because I’m from Spain!

Q: How did you guys get into music and decide to form a band?

A: It was started just randomly, about six years ago I think, and none of us knew how to play guitar, so when we went on a trip we were like, “Sure, we’ll bring guitars! Yeah, let’s do it” because our boyfriends at the time had a band together, and so we just brought them and we had absolutely nothing to do so we were like, “Should we cover songs? Okay!”. I learned how to play some songs by Bob Dylan, and we automatically started doing games with the tempo and games with the voices, being like “Okay, you’re gonna sing here, and then I’m gonna enter here, and then we’re both gonna do it,” You know? And we totally felt addicted to the feeling of it. We played at the boardwalk and got money from playing on the street, and we payed for gas with that money...so I don’t know, it just started so randomly, without a purpose at all.

Q: How did you decide on the name Hinds? I know you were called Deers for a little while.

A: Yeah, we were called Deers before, but we got threatened by a Canadian band who were called “The Dears,” and the law is based on phonetics, not how you write it. Even though they weren’t even active anymore, they sent us an email and were like, ‘If you don’t change your name, we’re gonna sue you,” and we were like, “Oh shit, we don’t have money or time to do that,” and we didn’t have our record yet, so we just changed it. And we chose Hinds because it’s the female term for deer.

Q: Who are some of your biggest influences right now?

A: I would say The Strokes, Bob Dylan, and maybe a mix between early Mac DeMarco and the latest Growlers.

Q: I really like what you’ve said in the past about having to negotiate being an all-female band and having to work harder to be taken seriously. What does it mean to you to be an all-female band?

A: If I’m honest, I didn’t know when we started that I was going to end up feeling this way, but now that I know what it is like, it’s 100% important to me because nothing would have been the way it is if we weren’t an all-female band, I think. Like in the first place, when [Carlotta and I] started, we knew we weren’t going to judge each other because we both felt exactly on the same level. We’ve been music fans forever and all our boyfriends had bands and all our friends had bands, but they were always guys. We admired them so much that we didn’t feel that we could [make our own band,] not because they were telling us we couldn’t do it, but because they’d been playing their instruments for like seven years, and we were like, “How are we gonna start now?” Like, it just sounded ridiculous. So I think it was totally vital that we both started at the same level. When you write, getting out all the ideas you have— even the stupid ideas—can lead to the cleverest ideas, and you don’t get to say those bad ideas if there’s someone who you really admire in the room, or at least not at the time because we didn’t have confidence at all. And then when we thought about adding drum and bass, we knew that if we chose guys, it would be the same—like if suddenly some of them said “Yeah, we should do this or that,” then we would automatically say yes to what they wanted, because we admire them so much. And we also realised that from the outside, everyone would think that [the boys] were the ones writing the music and that we were the ones just smiling in the pictures, and that got us mad because we were the ones who started the band!

Q: What about this second album was different for you guys?

A: The lyrics—in the first record we did so many metaphors, and what we meant to say ended being a little bit more hidden, but with this record we were like “Okay, we want to say this, we’re actually going to say this as we would in real life,” and not be ashamed of it.

Q: What was your songwriting process like for this album?

A: There’s always two different phases in the writing—one of them is Carlotta and I looking for chords and vocals and melodies that we like, and then there’s another phase with the four of us in the rehearsal room just throwing out all our ideas and seeing if they work together. They don’t always have to be in that order, like we can start with an instrument piece and then try to find a nice melody for it, or the other way around.

Q: On a non-music related note, you launched a clothing line with Urban Outfitters and collaborated with Steven Madden—any similar projects on the horizon?

A: Well, we take our merch really seriously, and it’s not really a brand collaboration, but we do design everything in our store. I hope someday it will come out as a brand, actually. But when we’re on the road, there’s really not a lot you can do, and we’re going to be on tour until January or February of next year, so right now we’re totally focused on the record.

Q: How would you describe the band in one word?

A: Freedom.