On the Rise
HEAL

While Dani Ambrosí, Edu Mató, and Raúl Pérez knew each other from previous projects, this iteration of the Catalan quartet introduces a new quality they haven't encountered before.

Vocalist Laia Vehì held the seeds of the project, she tells me from her home in northern Galicia. With a background mostly in composing electronic music in projects with her little brother, she hit up drummer Pérez who in turn pulled Ambrosí on guitars; he then got bassist Mató on board – and the rest is history. Explaining her decision to seek out a band for her ideas, she tells me, "I was like: maybe this is not for my own solo project, but there's something here that I'd like to explore with you guys. And I think that they felt the same."

The early days of HEAL did take some work to establish the magic: "Yeah, it took a while to find the glue…it wasn't smelly enough for us to get hooked to it," Ambrosí laughs, currently back in his homeland of Gran Canaria for the holidays.

Vehì's more considered, composed vocals alongside her bandmates' 90s indie/punk influences helped the four-piece find their sound – wistfully melodic with searing highs – and they honed their craft as residents of Fabra i Coats: Creation Factory, at the Barcelona Institute of Culture.

"When we got together, we took a little bit of time to understand each other sonic-wise, but it was interesting because we all knew there was something special, and there was potential there adding Laia's powerful voice into our regular 90s, indie shit," he laughs again. "If we would have continued without her, it would have been another regular 90s power pop band or whatever."

It was post-pandemic when they first began playing together and then in 2023 came the first self-released HEAL singles,"Not A Big Deal" and "The End", followed by the BCN Breakdowns EP. These scratched the surface of what was to come on last year's debut album The Shiver. Opening with the resoundingly euphoric "Nope", it paves the way for a dichotomy between the loud and the quiet, particularly on album closer, "Where Was I Wrong?".

The guitars are ramshackle in the way that only a student of an underground tape-trading system, like Ambrosí, could concoct. Growing up in Gran Canaria, where there was nothing but dunes and tourism, his only connection to the more US-centric 90s underground scene came from a contact with family in Sweden who brought back CDs from the the likes of Swedish punk bands Millencolin and No Fun At All. "This guy was super secretive about it. He was like, 'Hey, I'm bringing you this, but don't share with anybody'," he says stressing the point. "We were like, Okay, man, why? Shit. So we didn't have a lot of access, we only had access to the mainstream, like Offspring, and NOFX, a little bit of that."

Vehí likens her musical awakening in more spiritual terms: "For me, it was a bit mystic. When I was super little, I began to feel something with music, like I was super sensitive to it, and I began to sing. And I was going back to my house from school, and going to my toilet and closing the door and singing on my own, you know, [like] I had this secret connection to God or something."

The spiritual and the human coming together in HEAL was a part of their process. "We had to open up our visions and some of the things we had learned in the past," explains Ambrosí. "We had to de-learn a little bit, and then share a lot of music."

Eventually, the four of them found the ideal balance between the mixtures of folk, electronic, indie, and emo they each bring to the table. Thus, it didn't take long for The Shiver to come to fruition. It runs as an emotional embodiment of Vehì's inner workings, which she professes is her go-to for music. When it comes to the electronic side of her creativity, there's a synesthesia-type element at play. "When I have been doing electronics things I see different colours, and [if] I connect myself to something I see a lot of blues, a lot of indigo there," she tells me.

As would be expected with a project rooted in the human connection between four people, HEAL offers something more grounded, or "something more raw," as Vehí puts it. "I don't know how to say it. Maybe I'm being super abstract, but this is how I see these two scenes."

The biggest learning curve the group had lay with Vehì. It was understanding the natural dynamic that comes with the heart-on-sleeve driving tunes the band is inspired by; letting the spaces breathe with the quiet, and allowing the loud to expand fully. Her projects with her brother were ordinarily composed while recording, but, given the human nature HEAL was requiring, she had to learn an entirely new way of creating, to a beautiful end: "And now I'm so happy, because when I'm there, I'm disconnected to devices, but I'm so more connected to my colleagues, to the band, and the music."

That connection is most prevalent in their live shows and up next for them is an appearance at European showcase festival Eurosonic Noorderslag, in Groeningen, Netherlands. "Yeah, I think live definitely is where we shine," Ambrosí says. "It feels very natural for all of us, when we go on stage, we are in the zone. We stay in the zone until it finishes. That's something that I think we all love doing," he beams.

Even after Mató initially left the band for a period, where they trialled other bass players, they knew he was the one they needed. "Like this guy is a waterfall of creation," Ambrosí says. They're cemented in the lineup and united by their common goals and ambitions, and the rest now lies with their constantly burning drive. "We're here now. And, zero regrets, it's the best decision we would have ever made," Ambrosí enthuses. "We all have the same way of approaching this and feeling this, so it's awesome."

They're all in their mid-30s and 40s now, which means dedication to a group requires total buy-in. Or, as Ambrosí puts it, "music is primary for us." When it came to signing to Primavera Records, they knew that was the impasse, and it was Pérez who quipped an eternal sentiment: "Say yes, then we'll figure it out." And that's what they did.