Hiqpy

What if Kurt Cobain and Ariana Grande had a Pokémon together? That would give you something like Hiqpy. This four-member creature is playful and somewhat headstrong. Superpower: It spits flames of echoing adlibs and fuzzy guitars.

In 2023, the Amsterdam-based indie rock band Hiqpy participated in Popronde as a 3voor12 Talent. With each show, the reviews grew more enthusiastic, and their inbox filled with industry emails. A subsequent fifteen-minute performance at Noorderslag 2024 was enough to convince the rest of the Netherlands of Hiqpy's right to exist. And that was before they had released a single note of music. "Hiqpy is suddenly the next big thing, even though there's nothing on Spotify," headlined NRC.

The fifteen minutes in Groningen led to more than forty festival shows in 2024. From Paaspop, Appelpop, and Bevrijdingspop Haarlem to Best Kept Secret and Into The Great Wide Open, where the beginner's stage, the Kuil, was already too small for the growing Hiqpy hype. In 2024, the band received the Zonneprijs for musical talent, was included in EKKO's Class of 2024, and was chosen as Record Store Day Talent. The 7-inch LP with two live tracks they released in limited edition became a collector’s item. Not surprising, since besides two videos on YouTube, Hiqpy’s magic was only available live. There was nothing on Spotify because, since the train started moving in January, there had been no time to record music.

Until now, exactly a year after Noorderslag. Now there's the single "Something," produced by Grammy Award-winner Danton Supple, who has produced multiple Coldplay albums. According to Abir, the song "completely fits." She moved from Tunisia to Haarlem at two years old. As a child, she found writing lyrics a way to express the confusing friction between her Islamic background and Western freedoms. "Something" is about finding balance between shame and curiosity. It’s about giving in to a feeling that was never supposed to be there, or that you didn’t know existed. It's about letting go of religious, cultural, and societal expectations to experience love for another and, through that, for oneself.

Oh, and the name Hiqpy? It was invented by Abir's brother, who randomly scrambled some letters. Why this combination works, they don't know, but it does. Hiqpy sounds like a little creature, a Pokémon with superpowers, just like the four of them. But they prefer to keep the meaning of Hiqpy open. Hiqpy is a blank canvas. The word means nothing, so the band can be anything.