Cover Feature Hinds: Our Shit, Our Rules

“Today,” frowns Carlotta Cosials, rifling through a tattered notebook of draft lyrics and vague doodles for merch designs, “we have done 88 gigs. Including last year, gig number one hundred is happening now,” she finalises. After a week apart at home in Madrid, a newly reunited Hinds have assembled for cervezas in a downtown bar, and, with debut album ‘Leave Me Alone’ waiting for deployment in January, they’re all in particularly reflective moods.

Who can blame them, really? Little over a year ago, Hinds - then called Deers - were nervously waiting backstage at London’s Sebright Arms. Back then, you could count their total live appearances easily with one hand. “For real, that was our fourth gig, ever!” exclaims Carlotta, “and we weren’t musicians before.” Growing up in Madrid, listening to The Black Lips, and making yearly pilgrimages to watch bands like The Strokes pass through Benicàssim, Carlotta and her friend Ana García Perrote started Hinds on a whim after mucking about with a couple of guitars on holiday. Bands in Madrid stayed in Madrid; that’s what they’d learned.

Suddenly, though, joined by new recruits Ade Martín and Ámber Grimbergen, Hinds found themselves playing sweaty, low-ceilinged shows to rammed-full rooms across the channel, and touring the States with Glass Animals. The suggestion that Hinds jumped straight into the deep end - without a single look back - is no exaggeration. For a lot of new bands, the immense pressure could have been overwhelming. Hinds, though, have a single motto that they’ve stuck by. Nuestras mierdas, nuestras reglas. Our shit, our rules.