From two singles to an EP
HAERTS have spent much of 2013 in an intriguing position: conspicuous enough for “Wings” to travel far beyond New York, but mysterious enough that the people making it could still seem secondary to the recording. The announcement of the band’s debut EP, Hemiplegia, begins to change that balance.
The collection is scheduled for September 17 through Columbia and was produced by Jean-Philip Grobler, better known as St. Lucia. Previously released songs “Wings” and “All the Days” will be included. More revealingly, the announcement comes with an intimate film from the group’s Williamsburg studio, combining conversation with performances of “Wings” and “Heart.” Under the Radar reported the EP, film and tour plans on August 8.
That pairing makes the studio feature more useful than a conventional introduction. “Wings” is the established song—the record that earned radio support and gave HAERTS their first visual identity. “Heart,” by contrast, points beyond the two tracks already in circulation. The film therefore catches the band between recognition and definition: known for a striking single, but now responsible for demonstrating that the single belongs to a larger body of work.
The distinction matters because HAERTS’ recordings are polished enough to obscure how they are made. Synthesizers and reverberant vocal layers give “Wings” an imposing scale, yet the group presenting those sounds is a five-piece with clearly divided instrumental roles. In the studio footage, atmosphere is no longer an anonymous production effect. It becomes the result of musicians listening and responding to one another in a room.
The five people behind the name
HAERTS’ 2013 lineup consists of vocalist Nini Fabi, keyboardist Ben Gebert, guitarist Garrett Ienner, bassist Derek McWilliams and drummer Jonathan Schmidt. The members have roots in Germany, Britain and the United States, but their shared working base is New York. WFUV identified the lineup and interviewed the group during a May session, when only “Wings” had received a formal release.
In that interview, Fabi and Gebert explained that HAERTS developed gradually through other bands, personal connections and studio work. They began experimenting with Grobler before the present lineup settled into place, while Ienner entered through the producer. McWilliams and Schmidt then completed the performing group. Their account suggests a project built through accumulated relationships rather than assembled to fit a particular scene or genre.
That history can be heard in the music. The arrangements use the vocabulary of synth-pop—bright keyboard timbres, large reverberant spaces and choruses designed to open outward—but they retain the push of a conventional rhythm section. The bass is not merely a low electronic tone, and the drums do more than keep time beneath programmed surfaces. Guitar often functions as color instead of announcing itself with a riff. Fabi’s voice remains the center, but the band’s force comes from the way each part enlarges her melodic line.
The unusual spelling of HAERTS has invited speculation, although the musicians offered no elaborate origin story to WFUV. Ienner’s explanation was essentially that the group preferred it that way. That absence of mythology feels appropriate. At this stage, the songs carry more information about HAERTS than the name does.
Why “Wings” travelled
“Wings” began circulating before its commercial digital release, gathering the kind of early enthusiasm that can make a debut feel established before a band has a catalogue. In January, KEXP selected it as a Song of the Day, identifying Grobler as its producer and highlighting the tension between the song’s controlled construction and its expansive, 1980s-associated production.
The single was released digitally on April 9, with a seven-inch edition offered at the same time. Its video was directed by Emily Kai Bock, photographed by Evan Prosofsky and shot on Super 8 in Nashville, according to Gorilla vs. Bear’s contemporary premiere. The grain of the film and its attention to ordinary people give the song a visual texture quite different from the immaculate surfaces of the recording.
That contrast helps explain the video’s effectiveness. “Wings” is built around elevation: firm drums, high keyboard figures, layered backing voices and a chorus that appears to widen the space around Fabi. A sleek or futuristic treatment could easily have repeated what the production already supplies. Bock’s images instead place the song among houses, streets, bodies and imperfect light. The music reaches upward while the film remains close to the ground.
The studio version works through restraint as much as scale. Fabi does not begin at full intensity. Her phrasing allows the verse to hold something in reserve, and the arrangement introduces its largest gestures gradually. When the chorus arrives, its impact comes from the release of pressure already established—not simply from a louder mix. Repetition strengthens that effect: familiar melodic figures return with greater weight because the instrumental frame around them has expanded.
The new Williamsburg performance tests whether that architecture survives outside the original recording. It does not need to duplicate every layer. The important elements are the pulse, the slow accumulation and the relationship between Fabi’s controlled verses and the song’s larger refrain. Showing those mechanics is one reason the studio film is valuable: it turns a record that can feel almost seamless back into a sequence of musical decisions.
“All the Days” changes the motion
HAERTS followed “Wings” in May with “All the Days.” Under the Radar documented its arrival on May 24, while The Line of Best Fit treated it as the difficult but successful follow-up to a heavily praised debut.
The second song preserves the group’s taste for bright surfaces and gradual expansion, but its rhythm changes the emotional character. Where “Wings” advances with stately assurance, “All the Days” has a looser, shuffling momentum. The percussion and bass keep it moving even when the vocal seems to hover. Its build is less about a single dramatic ascent than a series of smaller surges.
That difference is important for Hemiplegia. Two songs that merely reproduced the same successful design would leave the EP carrying the burden of proving the band’s range. Instead, “All the Days” retains a recognizable scale while finding another way through it. Fabi remains the immediate focal point, but the instrumental pattern has a stronger independent pull; the groove does not simply wait for the vocal climax.
The song has also begun to establish itself onstage. When HAERTS opened for Atlas Genius and Pacific Air at Toronto’s Opera House on June 23, Exclaim!’s concert review singled out “All the Days”, observing that its layers benefited from the venue’s ambient space. The assessment is useful because it confirms that HAERTS’ scale is not exclusively a studio construction. The live room may alter the balance of keyboards and voice, but it can also make the music’s depth more physical.
“Heart” opens the next door
The Williamsburg film’s most consequential selection may be “Heart.” It is not one of the two previously released songs named in the EP announcement, and WFUV had already presented it as material intended for the band’s forthcoming full-length. Including it now prevents the session from becoming a recap of familiar work.
“Wings” can reassure listeners who arrived through the debut. “Heart” has a different task: it must sound recognizably like HAERTS while making room for a future that has not yet been packaged. Its presence says that the group’s developing identity is not confined to the immediate EP campaign. Independent reports published around the film consistently identify the feature as an interview accompanied by “Wings” and “Heart,” including Hypebeast’s account and The Line of Best Fit’s session report.
The studio setting makes that preview feel credible. Rather than asking an unreleased song to compete with the finish of a single, it places both numbers under the same conditions. Listeners can hear common traits—the patience of the arrangements, Fabi’s command of long melodic shapes and the band’s preference for collective lift—without requiring the songs to be interchangeable.
A campaign built for the stage
The EP announcement also extends HAERTS’ live trajectory. After dates with Shout Out Louds and appearances alongside Atlas Genius, the group is scheduled to begin a September support run with Washed Out. The itinerary includes Vancouver, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia and other North American stops.
That pairing is logical without making the bands identical. HAERTS share Washed Out’s interest in enveloping texture, but their music is organized around a more visibly declarative singer and the dynamics of a five-piece. A support tour will place those differences in front of audiences already receptive to carefully layered pop.
For now, the Williamsburg film captures the useful uncertainty before that larger test. HAERTS have a breakthrough song, a contrasting follow-up, a debut EP with a date and a new composition pointing beyond it. The session does not solve the mystery by explaining every influence or production choice. It does something better: it allows the band to replace abstraction with performance. “Wings” may have introduced the name, but “Heart” and the five musicians playing beside it begin to show what the name can contain.