When Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote appear through the glow of my computer screen, my eyes are immediately drawn to the bold statement necklaces hanging from their necks. They are both of a simple oceanic theme, Carlotta’s a shiny silver starfish and Ana’s a lovely conch shell. I ask about them and Ana reveals they are a gift from her to Carlotta.
Beyond their material beauty, these simple accessories point out a lot about who these women are as both people and friends. The duo of Carlotta and Ana, the Madrid-born creatives who make up the band Hinds, are just as bold and interesting as their attire. Myself, and all the other Hinds fans, are drawn to that innate brightness, charisma, and joy. Passion is something you just can’t fake, and for Hinds, you can just hear it through the melodies.
Four years after the release of their last record Prettiest Curse, Hinds is back again, making a triumphant return with their brand-new record VIVA HINDS. While the duo considers this to be the best album of their careers so far, it hasn’t been an easy road to get here. After the pandemic made the release of their last album fall flat, Carlotta and Ana also dealt with the loss of their label and management team, plus the unexpected exit of two dear friends and bandmates.
For many, this might feel like an end, but these women are just as scrappy as they are witty, and all that bad luck was no match for Hinds. So now it’s time to usher in a sparkly, brand-new era of the band with VIVA Hinds.
1883 Magazine sits down with Spanish indie-rockers Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote, the duo behind Hinds, to dive into the secrets of their lifelong friendship, the serendipitous making of their song “Boom Boom Back”, and their latest album VIVA HINDS.
I wanted to start off on a bit of a personal note. You guys have been best friends for a long time, even before forming the band in 2011. I was curious about how you guys met. What’s the story there?
Carlotta: Oh my God, years and years ago. We’ve been friends for 14 years now.
That’s great, over a decade!
Carlotta: Yeah! Well randomly she was the best friend of a guy I was seeing, or dating.
Ana: Whatever you do when you’re 18.
Carlotta: Yes, exactly. And to be honest, we’ve been friends since that very first moment.
Ana: Yeah. It was like a proper crush. Instantly we found something that we hadn’t found in anyone else. In Spain, liking guitar, indie music, it’s really rare. I know it’s rare everywhere, but believe me,in Spain, it’s a lot more. So finding someone that had the same interests, that was super fucking fun and super cool. And she’s a girl too, so that was like a lottery. I couldn’t imagine this existed.
That’s amazing. So you guys had already known how to play guitar when you guys met?
Ana: No, no. We liked music, and that was our main thing that we spent our pocket money on, going to shows and festivals. We went to so many shows and festivals together way before we picked up guitars and started the band.
Oh, okay great! Well going off of that, I was wondering, what do you guys think is like a secret to such a long lasting friendship?
Ana: I think patience is important. Obviously we’ve had ups and downs. Right now we’re at a peak. Nothing can stop us, and it’s great. It’s a cheesy answer, but love too, because love makes you have patience and understand the other person. You may not always be on the same page, sometimes one is more sad than the other, or someone’s going through something more difficult, so it’s all about love really.
Carlotta: I think it’s also related to empathy. Empathy gives you an understanding of what the other has been through. I don’t feel like I’m making an effort. I don’t feel like I could give you advice on how to keep a friendship because I don’t feel like I’m good at it or something like that. I’m not making an effort to be a friend of Ana. This is just super, super natural to me. I make an effort to keep some relationships from the past and stuff, and in those relationships I make an effort to keep my interest and go to the important dates and the birthdays and behave like a present friend. But to Ana, it is the easiest thing ever.
I think that’s always a marker of a good relationship, when it just feels effortless, so that’s a great answer. Sort of shifting gears a little bit, obviously, we’re here because your album’s coming out so soon, so congratulations on that!
Carlotta: Thank you!
Obviously you guys dealt with a lot in preparation for this album. You guys split up with your management and label and even with some band members. When did you guys know it was time to start a new album, or was it something that has been in the making over the past couple of years?
Carlotta: We didn’t want to start an album until the end of the summer of 2022. At that moment we were finally ready, and the word album came back. Before we were too angry and too sad with what had happened during the pandemic and to our album Prettiest Curse and we weren’t ready to create another album yet. We needed some time to grieve the birth and the death of the last album.
That makes total sense. When I was reading the press release for your new album, I read that you both had dubbed this album one of the most accomplished of your careers. What sets this one apart from some of your past projects?
Ana: I think we absolutely got rid of every expectation. There are bands our size that have an audience and have a platform, but we don’t have money. I don’t know how to say it more poetically, but it all comes down to money, you know.
Absolutely, yeah.
Ana: Yeah. So we are walking that fine line of not being comfortable, but yet knowing that it’s worth it and believing the dream that one day it’s going to make sense and we’re not going to have to stress about bills and not make decisions based on money, which is ultimately everyone’s goal. For this album, for the first time, we didn’t have the goal that it was going to be the life-changing album that was gonna step us up to that level of having a breakthrough or something like that.
It almost felt like we were back to square one. The goal really was just to continue being a band, just making sure we survived through all the adversity and bad luck and people wanting to make us stop the band. So that gave us the freedom of really, truly doing what we wanted to musically.
Now it’s hard to believe because everything is going so fucking great. We’re just getting so much love. We were talking about it today, like things can’t go this right, you know? It’s hard for me to even explain how it was these past years. We didn’t know if we were going to still be a band, or if people were going to listen to us.
So we really got rid of all of those expectations and completely forgot about the outside world and took every decision just based on the songs and our emotions, which is, now that I see it, a fucking luxury and obviously made it the album that we made.
Carlotta: It’s very tricky to have this conclusion, but it’s true that we needed to go through these terrifying times to be able to make this album. It’s not that you need suffering to make good art, I disagree with that statement, but it’s true that this particular album would have been completely different if things were easy. It absorbed all of the pain and the struggle and the strength of getting up from the fucking floor.
I feel like this positivity that you guys are talking about, just coming from such a difficult time and pushing forward, is exactly what people love about you guys so much.
Ana: Yeah. It’s not easy to be optimistic.
It’s definitely not.
Ana: Especially when you grow up and you realize that the world sucks.
That’s why we need more people like you guys to help us all remain positive! But anyway, digging into the album a little bit more, Carlota you’ve mentioned that some of your favorite tracks from the album are “The Bed, The Room, The Rain and You” and “Superstar”. I read that you were even surprised you had written that song. I was wondering if you guys could both go into a song you really love from the album.
Ana: We could go on for hours about each song.
Carlotta: Yeah. I love talking about the songs, but I think I still have to choose “The Bed, The Room, The Rain and You”. Right now we are getting ready for the live show and preparing a new performance. We don’t have dancers or decorations, we don’t have things like that, so we need to think very witty and have good ideas that are free or cheap.
So, we’ve been arranging the songs to make them very fluid and to have a nice curve of emotion. We’ve completely transformed “The Bed, The Room, The Rain and You”, and suddenly, I’m finding myself again in the song. I still can’t understand how it’s so well-written. To me, it’s satisfying and sad at the same time. It’s the acceptance of just being in love with someone that doesn’t love you back, but still being okay with that idea and just enjoying that love that is making you feel so good. I think that’s a treasure.
To feel in love, it’s amazing, but it can be a happy thing sometimes and very painful at other times. I think that whenever you’re in love, whenever you love someone or something, that love will forever belong to you. It doesn’t belong to the other person, really. It’s a gift to yourself, I think.
I love that perspective.
Carlotta: I’m a very hopeless romantic. I cannot avoid it. But I am really, really happy about what that song encaptures, and with the most simple grammar in the world that even a five year old can understand. I’m very, very proud of that song.
I love that you shared your perspective on it too, so thank you for that. How about you, Ana? Do you have a particular song that you’re a big fan of? I know you said that, obviously you both love them all.
Ana: Well I was going to say “Stranger” because it captures such a low moment in my mental health, and I’m glad that I have that song to help me remember that it is finished and there’s a life after all that. But actually, I think I’m going to tell you a story about “Boom Boom Back”. The way we wrote “Boom Boom Back”, and it’s a thing that kept happening throughout the whole album that was like we had bad luck or something, things didn’t go as planned. But then, that turned out into something beautiful and something that we liked better than the original plan.
The day we were going to write “Boom Boom Back”, we were supposed to have a writing session with a writer. It was someone that I was really excited about, they were writing with huge artists. But she canceled on us because she had a Dua Lipa session. Which, fair enough, I would do that too.
[Laughs]
Ana: But on the second day, someone in their family got sick, and we were sitting in the living room of the rental house we were staying at in LA for hours. It was 10, then 11, then noon, and they weren’t confirming or saying that they weren’t going to make it. So we were like, okay, this person isn’t going to show up, it’s not going to happen. We’re in LA, and time is pressure when you’re not from these places, the days are really valuable, so we’re like, fuck, this is one day ruined. But then our old manager called someone.
This particular person couldn’t do the session, but he thought of this guitar player in another band that had a home studio. So he called this guy and was like, “Hey, there are two girls that want to do a writing session. Are you up for it?” And he’s like, “Yes, they can come to my house in 30 minutes, but I have to leave in four hours.” And we were like, fine. So we jumped into our car and we wrote “Boom Boom Back” in four hours, including lyrics, arrangements, the structure of the song, like almost every fucking thing. We wrote it that day.
Carlotta: Yes, and with “Boom Boom Back”, everything happened like that. Even for the music video, we rented a convertible to do all the shots. The shooting was in LA and the car broke down the day before the shooting. We were on the sidewalk of LA and every single person was saying, you cannot park there. But it was broken. We couldn’t move it.
We had to wait for the car to be towed. They told us it’s going to be between 90 minutes and 120 minutes, and we were like, well, what else can we do? Maybe we should rehearse. And that’s when we invented the little dance that we do in the music video of “Boom Boom Back”. And then, when the car guy arrives to give us a tour of a second car, suddenly the car that he is giving us as a B option is even better than the original fucking convertible.
Ana: It was a Lincoln Continental
Carlotta: Yeah, Continental from 1979. I mean, wow. It’s just like she was saying, how can things go so wrong and suddenly turn out so good?
Ana: And it just points to what we were telling you before, that the whole album wouldn’t be like it is if life wouldn’t have changed the plans we had. In the moment with all of these things, you can either freak out or accept it and rehearse your little dance. So it’s a good life lesson that we learned throughout the whole writing of the album.
Rehearse your little dance. I like that.
Carlotta: It’s a little dance!
Ana: It’s not in the opera house, but for us the streets of LA were our little dance studio for a while.
Well it sounds like the whole song was just meant to turn out how it turned out, it’s funny how life works out like that sometimes. Another question I want to ask you is about “En Forma”. I think this is your only song out that’s sung entirely in Spanish?
Ana: There’s another one on the new album called “Mala Vista” too.
Oh amazing! Well, I was curious how you guys made the decision to sing these songs entirely in Spanish. Did they just kind of pan out that way, or was it an intentional choice?
Carlotta: Not intentional at all. I don’t think that anything in this album was thought. Thought in the way like, how is this gonna land with the audience? Nothing was related to marketing. We were tired because, for the previous album, the word success was just too much in the conversations with the American label and with the American management. The whole thing was a bit more stressful. With this album, we haven’t heard the word success in two years.
We haven’t thought about it. It’s not in our vocabulary anymore. We have other things in mind. So it definitely wasn’t a decision, it just came up like that. And it’s super cool because it’s amazing to speak in your own language, and for the first time, we’re completely confident to do it. And to know that every single person from our school and our moms and our neighbors can fully understand what we’re saying, it’s a big step and a very good step for us, I think.
That’s great. Like you guys have been saying, like, I feel like those decisions just coming naturally is always a sign that you’re headed in the right direction. It’s not about success. It’s not about arbitrary goals. It’s about how you feel about it. But wrapping it up here, I know you guys had talked about how you found inspiration from artists like Courtney Barnett and Daniel Johnston for this album. Those are some really fun, eclectic artists, and I was curious who you guys were listening to now?
Carlotta: To be honest, I couldn’t listen to any more Courtney Barnett. All of 2023 was only Courtney Burnett. I started dreaming about Courtney Burnett. I mean, It was too much. Now we’ve been listening to a lot of country music, to your surprise.
Oh, wow.
Carlotta: Yeah. During the summer we’ve listened to Ted Lucas too, The Sharks, and we’ve obviously had the Brat album on all summer. I also just discovered Radiohead about five months ago. Um, Fontaines DC.The band Heet Deth, from Chicago?
Oh cool, I don’t think I’ve heard of them.
Carlotta: They were in my album cycle a lot this year. Jockstrap I also just discovered this year and I love it. They’re from the UK. So a lot of different stuff.
All amazing. Well now I had one more question. You guys have been doing this for over a decade now. You started off not knowing how to play any instruments and now you’re playing these huge stages. I mean, you’re about to go on a world tour. What do you guys think is an important thing you’ve learned on this journey, and do you have any advice for people looking to do the same thing that you guys are doing now as artists?
Ana: When we started, we used to stress a lot about not being to the level that we wanted to be, and I think it’s something that still happens. You know, I wish I was the fucking best keyboardist, singer, guitar player, producer, recorder, I wish I was. And I know I’m not at the peak of my musicality, but I’m starting to accept that it’s okay. You can only go as fast as you can in terms of time. In a band like ours, we really do everything from the interviews to the music videos, designs of merchandising, making sure we’re booking the flights, rehearsing–
Carlotta: Doing taxes…
Ana: Yes, taxes and lawyers and contracts. There’s a million things we can be doing. We’d really like to rehearse more, that would be amazing, but I think we’ve learned to look past that. I feel like as girls, we feel like we have to prove 10 times more how much we deserve to be on stage. I think men don’t have that pressure of proving themselves constantly. So, musically, even though we’re so much fucking better and our goal is to be the best live band ever, and I think we’re not far away, but do not stress too much about that.
I didn’t realize you guys did everything. That’s a ton of work, a lot of people have like a whole team, so that’s crazy.
Ana: We’re very much in it. We have a team, and they work just as hard as us, but it’s a team of one person in our management and two people in our label and that’s it.
Wow.
Ana: At least we don’t have other bands. Imagine.
Was there anything you wanted to add before we sign off?
Carlotta: Support your friends, and don’t forget that music will always be there for you.
That’s a great note to end on. Well, Viva Heinz!
Both: Viva Hinds!
VIVA HINDS is out now.
Follow Hinds @hindsband
Interview Camryn Teder
Photography Dario Vazquez
