From left: Ienner wears jacket by Bespoke. Shirt by Kenzo.
McWilliams wears denim jacket by Diesel. Jeans, McWilliamsu2019 own. Shoes by Opening Ceremony.
Gebert wears jacket by Acne Studios. T-shirt and jeans by Diesel. Sneakers by Adidas Originals.
Fabi wears jumpsuit by T by Alexander Wang. Shirt by Diesel.

HAERTS

On a drizzly Saturday in January, HAERTS sits quietly on a couch in a cozy suite at the Bowery Hotel in New York City. Around them, the usual hum of photographers and stylists picking up the remnants of a photo shoot provide the soft soundtrack. From their demure demeanors and soft spoken voices, the band members—Nini Fabi, Ben Gebert, Derek McWilliams, and Garrett Ienner—come off more like polite schoolchildren than rock stars. It’s hard to believe they just played a sold-out show at their local venue, the Music Hall of Williamsburg, just a few nights before, or signed to Columbia Records after releasing only their first song.

“Signing with a record label is a great thing and it helps you a lot,” says frontwoman Fabi, a petite brunette with a slight German accent, “but that will never define you as a band. I think that if that defines you as a band, you’re doing something very wrong.”

The rest of the band echoes Fabi’s sentiment that creating and performing songs is really all the band has ever sought to do. Their growing popularity, while appreciated, is just icing on the cake.

“There’s no decision. You can’t be what you’re not,” says Fabi, “and there’s no sense saying you want to go full mainstream or go full indie—neither of the two would be the true thing to do. We just want to do our music and we can only do our music that comes out of us.”

Music has been coming out of Fabi and Gebert, who mostly oversees production, since they were teenagers in Germany, where they originally met on the swim team. They met drummer Jonathan Schmidt and bassist McWilliams when they first moved to America to study in Boston. While the four quickly began collaborating together, they did not start producing music as the band HAERTS until just over a year ago.

After school, Fabi and Gebert moved to Brooklyn, where they met and began collaborating with producer Jean-Philip Grobler of St. Lucia, who soon introduced them to guitarist Ienner.

“It’s very natural [for the four of us],” says Fabi. “We work together as if we’ve worked together for a very long time, and it wouldn’t work any other way. Until HAERTS, the only other person I’d collaborated with was Benny and [vice versa]. I’ve always been really passionate about the writing and about his production, so for me it really had to be the perfect fit. If you’re really going to work with someone, it’s a precious thing.”

Fabi and Gebert were hesitant to work with Ienner at first, as they had already become friends with him and were worried it would change the dynamic of their relationships. “When you go in and you start really working together, you have to give a big piece of yourself,” says Fabi.

“And that’s the only way to find out if it’s right or not,” adds Gebert. “If it doesn’t work out then…”

“So it was a big relief when we first played together,” Fabi finishes his sentence, laughing.

What finally emerged from the band is an emotional, electro-synth-pop sound that is nostalgic yet modern. Their first song, “Wings,” exemplifies their unique yet relevant sound: danceable Eighties beats provide a catchy backdrop for Fabi’s stirring and husky Susanna Hoffs–esque croon. But lest you become too comfortable in their first EP’s bouncy, dreamy, emo quality, the band offers assurances their sound and vibe are ever-evolving.

“We’re not really looking for a specific sound, it’s not like we sit down and think, This is our sound,” says Gebert. “I think it’s more the opposite. We try to step out of our box or our comfort zone.”

“That’s the thing,” says Fabi. “You never arrive at a certain sound, I think it constantly evolves. The stuff you wrote yesterday is going to be different from what you write next week.”

While music is, obviously, at the core of HAERTS’ creative process, the band also draws from other art forms. “I grew up with a lot of visual arts. No one in my family was a musician,” says Fabi. “The first kind of art I was exposed to was more visual, but I’m not a visual artist or anything like that. We were just talking the other day about how we are all terrible drawers,” she adds, laughing.

Nonetheless, the announcement video for the song “Hemiplegia” showcases the band painting a banner ad. “That was just a little idea we had,” says Fabi of the video concept.

Emily Kai Bock, who has directed videos for bands including Grimes and Grizzly Bear, is behind the video for “Wings.” It has a home-video quality, and—with its provocative images of children playing, a father leaving his family, dead animals, and interspersed shots of the band in the woods—paints a quirky, somewhat unsettling version of the American landscape. The band agrees that the ability to utilize visual images, especially in the form of video, can be an effective way to add a dimension to their music. “Hopefully more directors or photographers [will collaborate with us in the future,] because we see art and it inspires us to do what we’re doing,” says Fabi.

Even the name HAERTS emerged from the band’s desire to evoke an illustrative image. “We didn’t set out with a name,” says Fabi. “We just wanted to focus on our music, and then eventually we realized we had to have a name. It was really important that we find something that’s really striking visually and something that’s very accessible. HAERTS is very specific, but also very wide, in a way.”

Like the band name, HAERTS’ current EP has that remarkable ability to feel personal yet universal. The band’s upcoming début album (due out this summer) will be an extension of the EP. But based on the band’s insistence that the music they write has no agenda other than to satisfy their primal need to make music, what the new tracks might sound like is anyone’s guess.

“When you make music, it’s not like, ‘Let’s have fun and write a song,’ ” explains Fabi. “It’s something that you have to do. You have to do it, and you don’t really know when it’s finished, but you have to get it out. It’s a need, it’s a necessity. And then at the end you just look back and don’t really know how it happened.”

HAERTS performs Wednesday through Saturday at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

Emma Greenberg is a freelance culture writer based in New York. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English and creative writing. Styling by Zara Zachrisson at ArtList New York. Makeup by Kristin Hilton at The Wall Group. Hair by Michael Thomas Lolla at The Wall Group. Photographer’s assistants: Aaron Thomas and Jeffrey Rose. Stylist’s assistant: Tess Herbert. Shot on location at The Bowery Hotel, New York. Special thanks to Kirk Wilson.

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