Artist
Hatchie
Brisbane, Australia • b. 1993
Hatchie is a musician from Brisbane, Australia, active since 1993. Their discography on Gatefold includes 4 records.
4
Albums tracked
24
In collections
1993
Since
Biography
Harriette Pilbeam (born 4 May 1993), known professionally as Hatchie, is an Australian singer-songwriter and musician. She released her debut EP, Sugar & Spice, in 2018. She started singing as a child, later learning guitar and bass in her teen years, as well as piano and clarinet. She studied entertainment, music, and management in college before pursuing live music as a creative outlet. She's the bassist and vocalist of the indie rock band Babaganouj, as well as a former member of the band Go Violets, which disbanded in 2014.
The Arc of Hatchie
The pivots — what forced Hatchie to reinvent.
The Jangle-Pop Blueprint
Pilbeam stepped out of the Brisbane indie scene with producer John Castle to engineer a massive, sugary guitar sound on Sugar & Spice. They used heavy chorus effects and bright 12-string acoustic layers to mimic late-eighties college rock. You can hear the regional isolation in these tracks, which feel intimate despite their stadium-sized pop ambitions. It established her signature formula of melancholic lyrics buried under blindingly bright melodic hooks.
The Elbrecht Upgrade
For her second full-length album, Giving the World Away, Pilbeam relocated to Denver and Los Angeles to collaborate with producer Jorge Elbrecht. He brought a heavy, industrial-adjacent electronic backbone to her songwriting, swapping out the jangly guitars for dark-wave synths and programmed trip-hop beats. The resulting tracks sound massive, trading the bedroom intimacy of her early work for a glossy, dance-floor-ready production style. It was a polarizing shift that pushed her sound closer to nineties alternative dance than classic shoegaze.
Influences
- Cocteau Twins — Pilbeam has repeatedly cited Robin Guthrie's signature guitar work as the foundation for her own instrumental textures. You hear this influence in the swirling, chorus-drenched guitar lines of 'Try.' She takes Guthrie's dream-pop blueprint and structures it around traditional pop radio frameworks.
- The Cranberries — The vocal delivery on Hatchie's early singles directly mirrors Dolores O'Riordan's clean, melodic power. The soaring chorus of 'Sure' relies on that specific nineties alternative-pop vocal phrasing. It is a conscious departure from the typical buried-in-the-mix shoegaze vocal style.
- Kylie Minogue — Pilbeam has openly credited the Australian pop icon as a massive influence on her songwriting structure and vocal hooks. This pop-first mentality is what separates Hatchie from traditional shoegaze acts who bury melodies under noise. You hear it in the dance-pop pulse of her later material like 'Lights On.'
- The Sundays — Harriette Pilbeam pointed to Harriet Wheeler's vocal style and the band's clean acoustic jangle as major reference points for her debut EP. The sparkling 12-string guitar layers on 'Sugar & Spice' are a direct nod to Dave Gavurin's production style on Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. It gives her music a bright, melancholic warmth.
- My Bloody Valentine — Hatchie's wall-of-sound guitar textures rely heavily on Kevin Shields' gliding guitar techniques. This is particularly evident on tracks like 'Without You,' where the chords bend and warp beneath her pop melodies. It provides the noisy foundation that keeps her slickest pop songs grounded in the shoegaze tradition.
Discography
Their records — most-collected first.
Around the web
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