Starting all over is never easy. Not everyone has the capability of completely turning the page, leave the past behind and start from scratch. Hana Pestle is certainly someone who can be proud of successfully deviate from her original (but not totally fulfilled) path. At the age of 27, Hana has had two very distinct careers. The only similarity? Both involve her natural talent: music.

Last summer, I was fortunate enough to catch one of her live shows. My brother had already told me about her, mainly how promising she appeared to be. That was an exciting day, because we would be able to finally see a Grimes concert after being fans of her music for the past couple of years. Since the show was in the context of a music festival and she would be closing the day, we were able to watch many live acts throughout the day. So, why am I telling this? Because who happened to be one of the members of Grimes’ live show and also had her own gig very early in the day? Hana Pestle herself! I only really caught her set due to my brother’s insistence but the bet surely paid off. Her live show was mesmerizing from the beginning and even though the crowd was quite small (there were probably about 100 people in the tent and about 1/3 of them were Grimes supporters) she was able to grab the attention from most of the audience. After two days of mostly listening to alternative rock acts, her beautiful pop songs were a fresh breath of air to my ears.

But let’s start from the beginning, since Pestle hasn’t always been making delicate pop tracks since the start of her music career. She is originally from Montana and at the young age of 17 moved to California trying to pursue a future in music. Her first steps in the business had the close guidance of Ben Moody (yes, the former Evanescence’s guitarist) and her music mostly fall into the acoustic alt-rock spectrum (I sometimes forget about how guitar-centered pop music was fucking huge from the middle 90s to the early 00s. God, I sometimes even miss when Alanis Morissette was all over the radio). Pestle was then able to put out some of her music on Moody’s label, FNR Records: one extended play, Live in the Studio EP and her first studio album, This Way. To get a sense of how her early work sounded, here’s a video featuring Hana covering Radiohead’s Creep:

At the time, she already displayed some potential: Pestle had an amazing vocal capability and a good stage presence. But something wasn’t really right with how things were rolling for her. In several interviews, she describes how intense her touring was during her first years as a full-time musician. In this specific interview with Nylon magazine, Hana gives us some details about her early performances and reveals that up until three or four years ago she had played around 600 shows:

I was playing a mix of my own songs and covers. I used to play so many Radiohead covers that it’s almost embarrassing. Then, I kind of stumbled upon the college circuit. I was just touring around the country in a van by myself, going from campus to campus, playing around 600 shows.

So, playing relentlessly around the country during one’s formative music years is something that many young artists have to do to sustain themselves. But can that be sustainable at the long term? Someone who travels and plays at such a crazy high rate probably doesn’t have the time/patience/means to stop for a minute and reflect upon their own artistry. Sure, there are plenty of bands that can write while on tour, that isn’t the issue here. The question is: can they evolve their songwriting or mature their signature sound?

Fortunately, Hana Pestle met Michael Tucker (aka BloodPop, formerly Blood Diamonds) around 2013. He’s a young music producer from Kansas that has worked with some of pop music’s biggest names (just to name a few: Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Madonna and Justin Bieber). Meeting BloodPop basically represented the turn of events for Pestle’s future in music, as she explained in the Nylon interview:

About two years ago, I met my now boyfriend, Michael Diamond, who produces under Blood Diamonds. We got matched up for a session, and the first day that I met him I was giving him the spiel of what I do and who I am. And he was like, “Are you happy with what you’re doing? Do you want to do that for the rest of your life?” And I was like, “Yeah.” But, he was like, “Are you fulfilled with where your music is at?” I really had never been super-stoked with my recorded music, so in talking to him I kind of had a realization of, “Okay, if I truly want to do this forever, I want to grow.” So, I took a break from going on the road, sold my van, and Mike helped me. He gave me the tools to learn how to produce music. So for about the next year and a half, I was cooped up making music.

To say that this was a crucial point in her music path is a big understatement: not only Pestle followed BloodPop’s advice, she completely scrapped her earlier work as she started to make music using a brand new moniker: HANA. From there, she stopped using the acoustic guitar as the central piece of her compositions (using the piano instead) and started learning how to produce her own tracks using software like Ableton. That learning process, along with BloodPop’s guidance, allowed HANA to completely dive in a sea of numerous new ideas as she was starting a personal quest to discover what would be the perfect sound for her new songs.

And I think HANA’s rebuilding has been quite successful. I mean, that’s not really a simple personal opinion because in mid-2015, after releasing the single Clay on Soundcloud, she became an internet sensation in a short amount of time. Even Lorde tweeted about the song, which certainly helped to spread the word. But more important than that tweet was meeting art pop sensation Claire Boucher aka Grimes, through BloodPop. Since then, HANA has established a close relationship with Boucher and she was able to be a backup singer/musician/dancer in Grimes’ shows opening for Lana del Rey in her 2015 summer tour. On a couple of shows from this tour, Grimes let HANA perform Clay in front of an audience that was way bigger than the ones she was used to.

In an interview with the Fader, HANA explains that Clay is mostly about a pretty bad break-up from a long relationship that was mostly manipulative towards her. For example, in the chorus she sings about letting herself go from those years (leaving all past behind except her name) and uses an analogy between the action of molding clay and reshaping her own life as she’s now a new woman molded to be finally happy:

Now I’m going away

And you’ll never find me

Five years older today

Molding clay

Found you never knew me

Now I can find happy

Nothing to show but my name

Her beautiful voice is just so incredibly well-suited to the spacey electronic background, that was produced by herself and BloodPop, in contrast to HANA’s early songs’ instrumentation. She throws numerous musical references throughout some of the interviews she did so far, like in this Pigeons and Planes piece where she names Björk and The Knive as some of the artists she listens to frequently, both of which are/were very important names in electronic experimentation in the last couple of decade.

In 2016, she eventually released her first self-titled EP within the HANA moniker which featured Clay and four other new songs. One of them, my personal highlight, was the track Underwater which has a pretty ethereal feel and, as HANA explained when the song first debuted:

It’s one of the first songs that I wrote/produced for this project so it holds a very special place in my heart. I wrote the lyrics with my sister in mind and what I’d tell my younger self if I could.

Along with her amazing singing and songwriter capabilities, HANA’s skills in production have also skyrocketed in these last few years and not only her own songs can be viewed as a product of that amazing progress as she also has released a couple of remix tracks recently. She remixed one of Art Angels‘ standout tracks, California and beautifully reworked the song but she also remixed one of Chairlift’s songs from the duo’s last album, Moth, more specifically the track Romeo:

She managed to transform a song that was already amazing in its own terms, a total pop-banger featuring uptempo beats and Chairlift’s characteristic melodic weirdness, into one version that not only can rival the original one, but for some people’s tastes could even sound better than the native tune. HANA successfully delivered a Romeo version with a gorgeous slow-paced atmosphere and also added her own vocal work into the song as she provided backing vocals in the chorus.

After an initial false start to her career, HANA is now projected to great heights in the music world. She has the ability to become one of pop music’s next big things as she can be both lyrically deep and musically creative. After touring and collaborating with BloodPop and Grimes (and also opening for Purity Ring and Shamir), I’m excited to find out what’s next for HANA because her future will certainly be bright.

Listen to HANA’s self-titled EP: