Eaves Wilder - Hookey (2023) Hi Res

Born and raised in London, Eaves Wilder began songwriting around the age of eight, harnessing an early obsession with ‘60s Motown records and the left-field pop of Lily Allen. She found similarities to The Sundays’ Harriet Wheeler’s voice in her own, and became comfortable with her lisp when she heard Grimes singing with hers. Eaves’ inspirations are endless, but this trio in particular illustrate the origins of her own sound. Pulling together the anger that drove the riot grrl genre, the walls of reverb from shoegaze, and delicate vocals, Eaves Wilder came into her own.

Signing to Secretly Canadian in 2021 – something she waited until she was 18 to do because she thought it would be uncool to have her mum sign her record deal for her – it’s been an accidental teen dream come true for Eaves, as she found an old school textbook with the words “top labels to sign to” scrawled over it, Secretly Group making the cut. “I'd been researching some of my favourite artists and I saw that Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen were here,” she notes.

Now she confesses her anger towards her former self and a desire to take up less space, and following her feminist revelation, now wants to write songs for girls like her teenage self. “I write songs imagining the person who's listening to them, which is always like a quite sad, lonely 14 year old girl. I want her, whoever she is, to listen and be like, that is exactly what I'm going through and this person understands, and I'm not alone.”

"Its basically about bunking off. I spent most of my teens playing Hookey in the music room at school. That’s where I wrote songs and taught myself instruments. Are You Diagnosed was literally written in the middle of my French GCSE class, and I remember mixing my first demos of Morning Rain under my desk in sixth form. through lyrics, production, or melody, my main thing is always adding as many Hooks as possible- or how can i expect people to listen? My inner dialogue when writing or jamming is MAKE IT MORE HOOKEY!!!! Each song is kind of a different perspective of where I was and why I wasn’t there. Morning Rain is the most direct example, but diagnosed (in hospital) Jumper (avoiding a shit boy) connect the rooms (getting high in my room making music) It shows a progression. Starting in hospital unable to speak my mind (literally) and ending with deciding to share the secret songs I’d been making." - Eaves Wilder on the Hookey EP