On the Rise
Beetlebug

“When I initially finished it I was like, I don't really know if I'm gonna do anything with this because I don't think people are going to be interested at all,” shrugs Hanford from her seaside home. “I was kind of worried about it because I didn't want it to define my work. I didn't really want that to define myself as an artist. But I thought, well, if no one's gonna look at it, I might as well just upload it for fun.”

Hanford’s assumptions were proven wrong, and her song, “Ode To L’Manburg,” quickly attracted over two-million streams, bringing with it a wave of internet attention to the DIY bedroom artist. Still adamant that this one track wouldn’t command her path, she took a step back, channelling her new-found inspiration into the pastoral-folk radiance of new EP all ash is snow.

Originally from the Hereford countryside, Hanford’s dad played an integral role in her early love of music. As a fan of Pink Floyd, Bill Nelson, Blur and Gorillaz, his influence was felt throughout her house growing up. “My dad was in a band when he was younger. My sister also writes her own stuff. The three of us are pretty musical,” she says. “I remember me and my dad, we wrote some stuff together. I actually only just remembered about that not long ago because we found my dad's old camcorder and there's a video of one of the songs that we wrote in that camcorder, which is very weird to pick up.”

When she was eight, Hanford moved from Hereford to South London. “It was a very big change,” she laughs. She began taking singing lessons, securing herself a scholarship at Saint Cecilia's Academy in Wandsworth, which specialises in music.

Despite the free lessons on offer, much of Hanford’s musical expertise is self-taught. “Guitar was the first instrument I ever really learned. My dad played guitar all the time so we always had guitars in the house, but I've never had lessons,” she says. “I had a keyboard in my room that I would fiddle around on and I did take violin lessons for a year in school.”

She took music at GCSE, but the formal structure of creating for grades ended up taking the fun out of her practice. “After that I got GarageBand on my iPad. I started putting stuff together and that was when I really started enjoying the process of writing a lot because I actually started finishing stuff and kind of producing. That was how I got into actually producing stuff,” she says. “I really started enjoying writing music.”

Hanford always felt that the expectation was for her to follow a career in music, something which replaced what should have been excitement with pressure. “I didn't take music at A Level. I think if I’d taken it, it would just completely squash any enjoyment out of it for me, so I avoided that,” she says. “I think I was still really trying to find myself and who I was and I think a lot of that started to happen when I was around sixteen or seventeen. It's still happening, obviously. I'm constantly trying to figure out who I am and also my identity within music. I think it is hard when you have an expectation almost upon you, but I think pulling away from that for a bit and focusing on other stuff that I enjoyed and then eventually finding my way back was the best thing for me.”

After her GCSE’s, Hanford did a year at art school before her family decided to move up to Scarborough. Initially she was going to continue with her studies in York, but she made the choice to focus on her music and look for a job instead. Just as she began her search, the world shut down, giving her an expanse of time to write and create.

Hanford had already begun to slowly build an audience, posting videos on YouTube and self-releasing a couple of singles. “It was very gradual at first. I had quite a nice, little following for quite a while before it kind of exploded,” she laughs. “I never expected anyone to really listen, but I think that was a good thing because it meant that I started it without feeling intimidated.”

Sharing the quaint and folksy tale “Ode to L’Manberg” in the autumn of 2020, it changed both everything and nothing for Hanford. “I really never expected it to go that far,” she says. While it brought an influx of attention, she kept Beetlebug as an independent project, only bringing in management two years later as things continued to grow organically.

Despite having released a string of singles over the past few years, it’s only now that she’s announcing her debut EP, all ash is snow. Due later this year, it was entirely self-produced by Hanford. “I only went to the studio because I can't really record in my bedroom, because I live opposite a car wash,” she laughs. “It's really noisy, and so it makes finding times where there's not any noise at all really difficult. I only had a sound engineer for one track. The rest of the time I just kind of figured things out myself.”

On new single “Scarecrow,” out today, her love of Big Thief and Adrianne Lenker shines through with lyrics that paint a rich and delicate narrative over her luscious playing and capacious arrangements. Tackling themes of isolation and feelings of detachment, it balances its lullaby delivery with evocative language. “I think ‘Scarecrow’ is one of the most personal songs I've written,” she says. “It is very vulnerable because for so much of my life I've often felt like an outsider looking in and I really liked the idea of portraying that through a scarecrow because it must be so lonely. If a scarecrow could feel, I think it would be quite lonely to be a scarecrow.”

It’s a sentiment that resonates throughout all ash is snow. For a project that blossomed from one of the loneliest moments in history, to see how Beetlebug continues to connect with a growing fanbase brings the project full circle and promises that Hanford will be defined by more than just one love letter.