'I'm super stoked that we have new music out,' she says, 'because I became obsessed with the concept that I was going to die before we finished it.' We also talked about these misclassifications of the band's music - and its undeserved reputation as first-take musicians - and how the band's collaboration with Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai shaped Mood Valiant. Over Zoom, we talked about the band's path to Mood Valiant, including how Palm's experience with breast cancer informed her perspective on the record. Here, those Hiatus Kaiyote staples - intricate arrangements, flawless rhythmic feel, wondrous melodies, Palm's evocative lyrics - are all seamlessly interwoven and deepened. Valiant represents a marriage of all the disparate sounds, whether electronic, acoustic, or found, that the band has always been using.

After the spareness of its debut, 2012's Tawk Tomahawk, and the chaotic alien wizardry of 2015's Choose Your Weapon comes the band's most cohesive album yet. To Kaiyote, I put forth the optimistic thought that its excellent new record, Mood Valiant - its first in six years, out June 25 - is an undeniable showcase of the band's vast musical range and talent for arrangement. Music Interviews Australia's Hiatus Kaiyote Carves Out A Crazy Path It's more realistic, and less sensational, to realize that the band's commitment to a unique sound and genuine musical curiosity are what drive its members and draw new listeners, famous or not.

This proximity to Black music, especially from a group of all-white Australians, tends to be treated as overdetermined novelty in the media, though Kaiyote is not the first, nor will it likely be the last, group of white musicians to make music clearly influenced by Black culture. Still, some people seem most confident in classifying the group based on the enormously famous artists who have sampled it: Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Drake, plus a past single with Q-Tip. This had led to a typical back-and-forth in interviews with Kaiyote: 'Are you a jazz/neo-funk/r&b group?' answered with a less concrete, but more honest: 'Not any one of those things.' Its propensity for trying on and melding different styles - R&B, hip-hop, funk, soul - has led to repeated misclassifications by music journalists and even casual fans as to the kind of music it makes. The band - made up of lead singer and guitarist Nai Palm, bassist Paul Bender, keyboardist Simon Mavin and drummer Perrin Moss - is known for its intricate, genre-hopping style. In the last decade, Hiatus Kaiyote has been synonymous with a kind of understated cool that sometimes gets mistaken for pretentiousness. Hiatus Kaiyote's new album, Mood Valiant, is out June 25.Ĭlaudia Sangiorgi Dalimore /Courtesy of the artist

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