Debut single from Hastings all-female alt-folk band

They released their debut single just before Christmas – Jupiter’s Tears celebrating the return of the sun, advocating the power of ceremony and retelling the story of the witch.

Hannah Dennard, one of the five-piece, said: “We launched it at The Printworks in Hastings, and we had a great time.”

The band came together during lockdown. Siddy Bennett, Lily Kim and Amy Atkins started making music together: “And I was supposed to be there from the beginning but I was going away travelling to India. They started the band and started writing together. They did a lockdown streaming gig and when I came back, I joined and so did Philly Piggott so we became a five-piece. Our first gig was in Hastings a couple years ago.

The band bill themselves as “telling the lost stories that the ravens have witnessed since the dawn of time.”

“The music is alternative folk. It's mostly folk, I would say. The stories are very much folklore and there's quite a lot of tradition and a lot of the things we sing about, love songs, those sorts of things, are quite traditional, but I would also say that it's a little bit country influenced. We all sing. It's very harmony based and it is all original material. The first songs were done by Siddy, Amy and Lily before me and Philly joined the band. And then we started writing together since then. Each song comes together slightly differently but they mostly start with sitting around and playing the guitar and then we write the words together and write the melodies.

“The single Jupiter's Tears is our first single and we recorded it in Hastings about a year before it came out. Jupiter's Tears is about renewal and letting go of the things that no longer serve a purpose. When it was written everybody had personal things going on, relationships and things like that, and it's about letting go of what you no longer need. If things are holding you back, then you really need to think about what you need and about what you want. It has had a really good response so far. We had the single launch and we had a sell-out. We had a lot of familiar faces and people that had supported us and it was just great. We have been playing together for a few years and it has taken us quite a while to put this single together so it's lovely to do that.”

As for the future: “Last year we spent the summer doing festivals which is obviously the dream and we would hope to do lots more of that for this year but our main goal for this year is to record an album. We've got more than enough songs for an album. We just need to raise the money to do it. We have been doing lots of gigs and selling lots of merch but it's very very expensive to record an album. How much depends on who you do it with but it can cost thousands just to get an album done but that is our big dream for this year.”