GROOVY LOCAL GALS - YERGURL
Victoria’s teen queen, yergurl AKA Fae Scott, is a songwriter, vocalist and producer, making dreamy pop beats in her bedroom. Most recently, yergurl has been peppin’ it up at St Kilda Fest 2020, just before her featured release with Mars And Bones, her announcement of her place on the bill for Grampians Music festival, and (the part that we think is the coolest tbh) her feature on the cover of Beat Magazine.
Victoria’s teen queen, yergurl AKA Fae Scott, is a songwriter, vocalist and producer, making dreamy pop beats in her bedroom.
Yergurl describes the moments of growing up as a rebellious teen and explores the power emotions have over hormonal adolescents, through confronting, raw and honest lyrics. Yergurl’s unique story-telling is paired with atmospheric synths, lo-fi beats and layered, reverb-laden vocals to create pop you could swim in.
Yergurl’s unique sound is derived from her life-long appreciation for pop music, and takes inspiration from the 80s, to horrorcore, alt rock, and the works of The 1975, Charli XCX and Lana Del Rey.
Most recently, yergurl has been peppin’ it up at St Kilda Fest 2020, just before her featured release with Mars And Bones, her announcement of her place on the bill for Grampians Music Festival, and (the part that we think is the coolest tbh) her feature on the cover of Beat Magazine.
“It’s a sound that’s dreamy, atmospheric, other worldy and heavily rooted in pop. It’s a fully immersive and emotive ride that has darkness, radiance and everything in between. If you were to look into space with a ritzy telescope, you’d see yergurl in the middle of the galaxy, lounging on the rings of Saturn.” -Declan Byrne, Triple J
Starting out as an independent bedroom creative from Bendigo, Yergurl has been slowly but surely making her way up the rankings, becoming a Triple J Unearthed finalist, scoring various festival performances and her first headlining show in late 2019, and regularly updating her socials with new covers (including her latest dreamy cover of Metro Station’s ‘Shake It’) and original songs to keep us comin’ back.
You can catch her tracks also featured in our Spotify Playlist dedicated to all Aussie (and a few NZ) acts!
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GROOVY LOCAL GALS - YARA
We recently put together a small Instagram story series featuring a bunch of local gals who’re killin’ it right now, doing what they love and doing it well. Here’s a more in depth series-style look at each of those featured legends and a few more sick chicks we wanna mention! First up…
YARA (Yara Alkurd) is a Palestinian singer/songwriter with a melting pot of smooth sounds, stemming from jazz, soft RnB and neo-soul.
We recently put together a small Instagram story series featuring a bunch of local gals who are killin’ it right now, doing what they love and doing it well. Here’s a more in-depth series-style look at each of those featured legends and a few more sick chicks we wanna mention! First up…
YARA
(also featured on our Industry News Page)
YARA (Yara Alkurd) is a Palestinian singer/songwriter with a melting pot of smooth sounds, stemming from jazz, soft RnB and neo-soul.
Yara is a personal friend of ours who has seen some serious ups and downs but consistently keeps her head held high and keeps smashin’ it* out of the park (* - ‘it’ being her personal and musical achievements, and well, everything else she does). We love this gal and can not WAIT to see what she does in the next few months…years…forever… Yara is a shining example of what it means to do what you love, do it well, and do it regardless of what others may say/do to see your downfall, in both personal and professional scenes. Seriously, she’s the bomb dot com.
Following a rewarding yet strenuous upbringing at the heart of the Gaza strip, Yara migrated to Australia in 2009, to the small Victorian town of Colac. Learning english from countless hours of western television, she found herself hopelessly in love with the language and in particular, the music.
Yara’s been heavily influenced by the sounds of Amy Winehouse, Lianne La Havas, Emily King, H.E.R and Snoh Aalegra. She made the move to Melbourne to study and pursue music, which is where she founded her 7 piece band and is now an active musician in the Melbourne scene. She’s since worked with the likes of Eliott, Velvet Bloom, Emma Volard, SKŸE, Rara Zulu, Meiwa, The Senegambiant Jazz Band and Jack The Fox.
YARA’s very excited to be releasing her first track, ‘Man Hater’, into the world. According to her, it’s a piece about the poor way in which society treats women, specifically outspoken women, who request change.
“I’ve experienced an uncomfortable amount of difficult encounters with men in my life, which have been unpleasant to say the least, but what has been even more problematic are the people (men and women) who witness these situations, stand by and do nothing, or worse, dehumanise those who stand up for themselves and call them man haters”
YARA ’s debut single ‘Man Hater’ is to be released on the 8th of March 2020 (International Women’s Day).
LOVE FOR MAN HATER
“I just love the contrast between the lighter instrumental mixed with heavier, real talk. It’s like you've mixed pissed off with joy to make it more musically digestible, but topically not holding back.” - SKŸE
“So beautifully written - with such a strong message that EVERYONE needs to hear. Your melodies and voice are like honey. This one’s gonna be in my head for a while.” -Eliott
“It’s like you’ve got some real Billie Eilish tonal qualities but in this soul genre. And In terms of lyrical tone and mood it’s really unapologetic, and you’re really owning the space you’re in and not apologising for yourself.” -Sannia
You can also catch Yara on our next episode, to be released the weekend of International Women’s Day - keep your eyes peeled for that one, we’re pumped.
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Chats with; Jess and Jay - Don't Fret Club
In our most recent episode, we chatted to Jess Hope and Jay Wennington about, well, everything. Here’s a funky snippet where we talked about one of their primary projects (amongst many others, including Bad Seed Agency), Don’t Fret Club, a podcast about mental health in the music industry - what it is, how it came to be, and where it’s going next!
In our most recent episode, we chatted to Jess Hope and Jay Wennington about, well, everything. Here’s a funky snippet where we talked about one of their primary projects (amongst many others, including Bad Seed Agency), Don’t Fret Club, a podcast about mental health in the music industry - what it is, how it came to be, and where it’s going next! Check out the full episode here.
When and why was Don’t Fret Club started?
JESS: It started about 4 years ago just before we moved out here. It basically started because I completely burnt out in the music industry, no other way to really describe it. But it was also kind of everywhere; it was in a lot of the interviews that I did, like mental health would always come up and at the time – it doesn’t really happen so much now but at the time it was always either edited out or glamourised, or I remember it becoming art of the taglines or headlines when it wasn’t really a major part of the story. I think back even 4 years ago people didn’t really know how to talk about it. I hadn’t really thought about doing a podcast, even podcasts weren’t big then, so I didn’t really even know how to do it, but it was the only way that it couldn’t be edited, we could kind of give people a platform.
The idea was to talk to musicians about topics related to mental health and it was kind of broad enough that people didn’t feel forced to say a certain thing or touch on a certain topic. And luckily, I obviously have relationships in the industry with managers and artists and people who knew the right people to be on it. So, we actually started the podcast with Jenna from Tonight Alive and obviously she was the perfect person to start with, she steered the convo as much as I did and was very open to that, but definitely when we started no one was talking about mental health in music honestly.
We’re still not completely, in terms of the wider music industry, but it was just to get the conversation out there and not have it changed or misguided or anything like that, it was exactly what people wanted to say. That being said, being a podcast format can be a bit tricky in the sense that a lot for the artists will come to us when they’re on their promo cycle or when they’re in the mind of being very positive, not really always ready to talk, so every interview is very different and 4 years on every conversation is new and kind of challenging because we have to put a lot of ourselves into it as well. In order for people to feel comfortable, we have to create that safe space and be quite honest and open, so there have been dips in it when I’ve personally been not feeling like I was in the place to do it or vice versa.
It’s definitely been well received here in Australia, and we’ve had artists from all over the world do it and luckily we can jump on the phone with them, but I always [preffered] the face to face time versus a 10-minute phoner - it’s kind of like, I’m not really willing to put someone in that position of having to go over delicate topics on the phone with someone they’ve not met, so a lot of the episodes are with people I know or have worked with a lot, or interviewed before, it was helpful that I had already done those things that so I had those relationships already there. It was basically something that I needed to hear, and nobody had made it yet.
There’s a hashtag ‘#ShreddingTheStigma’ that pops up a lot on your social media and the website, where did that come from?
JESS: We’ve done a lot of content and admittedly a lot of it isn’t even out there, we’re very protective of it and almost to our detriment a lot. We have a lot of videos and interviews and an almost finished documentary that’s just not out because we want it to be right and perfect, and we don’t want people to think that we’re trying to glamourize the topic, which since we launched has happened a lot. People launch clothing brands with ‘I Am Sad’ and they’re almost proud of that, and we’re very wary of the reception we were getting. Some people thought they kind of had to say that they were depressed so that they could be part of the club, which is not the case at all. So [Shredding The Stigma], it’s essentially what the future documentary will be called I think, tying it back to music and widening the conversation. A lot of it is around stigma and that people aren’t ready to talk about it or deal with it or kind of put in mechanisms for people to cope with it and that's at every level. Like its artists, managers, labels, its people at the venue, everyone, and there are different kinds of stigma at every level. So, I guess the hashtag is an overall kind of thing, to kind of battle that in a way.
A lot of people kind of think that we're at the point where we can talk about it and that the stigma is not there, but I think that’s just not the case. Obviously, it is in certain cases, but so often we talk about it and there's no kind of repercussion or act after that - there's no aftercare if you like. So, we still think talking is what's needed to kind of lead to the next step.
Do people from the general public come to you, either in person or online, asking for advice or telling you their stories?
JESS: Kind of. The ‘zine fairs that we've done, I think was kind of us there and offering that space for people to come up, but a lot of the time if I've ever brought it up people don't really realize, that either it’s us or that we've done it, or we haven't put a lot of ourselves. It's weird because even though there's obviously a lot of me on the podcast whereas on our socials there’s not. You wouldn’t know the people behind it, and even that was a transition from in the UK when we started, my profile as a writer was bigger there, so when I moved here nobody knew me, nobody kind of connected me to the podcast, which is a good and bad thing. It’s obviously important to have that so that people feel comfortable [knowing who they’re talking to] but it’s also good not to have a single face because if someone doesn’t necessarily feel they can identify with me, I don’t want that to stop them finding something in the brand.
And that branding change that we’ve seen on the socials and the website, what boosted that to be changed?
JESS: I think selfishly we just needed something fresh because we've obviously been working with the same ‘creative’ if you like for four years. And also, I think it's been kind of done and other people have done it and we just wanted to broaden out and I think we almost want it to become, well I think it's naturally become a wellness general space. It's not necessarily a heavy music thing even. And I want to, because we've done other content like video and some written posts and obviously we did a ‘zine and that was super popular - I want to make sure that it's maybe not even just a podcast or it doesn't just rely on that content and that other people can start kind of putting their voice into it without me even needing to kind of interview or do a podcast or anything like that. And we've kind of built the community but I think it needs other voices, not just mine and the person I'm talking to at that time.
So you’ve been primarily covering the heavier music but you talk about interests elsewhere, where else would you like to see it go?
JESS: Yeah that's kind of happened just again because that's where my relationships with artists are and I want to make sure that they feel comfortable. But we've actually done one with Kwame which is only out it’s like a 30-second video. He's maybe the first hip hop artist we've done and we've had we've been given the option recently of a few more, we definitely want to do more within that kind of scene, but it’s just it’s making sure we really know the artists and that they’re comfortable and not just doing it in a 15-minute phoner when they’re allotted that time, because we’ve done that and it’s just not ideal for either party, you’re not given the time to really delve deep or explain who you are.
JAY: Yeah it is tricky because like Jess says, with the whole you kind not necessarily ‘stick to what you know’ but like, all of our friends and the connections we have are in a heavier world and I think it's hard sometimes for merit to translate into other genres. For example, just under a year ago we were lucky enough to have Corey Taylor on the podcast, and if we mentioned that to kind of anyone in the alternative scene obviously he's like royalty and we're very proud of that because it carries a certain level of merit to his name, but to someone in the hip-hop scene or like an urban scene or even a pop scene to an extent it perhaps doesn't quite carry the same thing as it does here. I do think that we both feel that we've kind of hit a bit of a glass ceiling with the genre, I mean we've done the frontman of one of the biggest bands in the world. I think Jess and I both agree that there's only one person that we would like to do more and that is Ozzy Osborne. I think once we had those two, we could die happy, we’d be done.
JESS: I've not actually thought about it until this moment, about what he'd say, but I think the best ones we've had are where people have no inhibitions and say how it is and have a lot of stories to tell.
GABBY: I feel like he'd be an open book.
JAY: Definitely, though I'm not sure what language that book would be written in.
But yeah, I don't know. It's a good question. I don't know where it's going to go next and I think that's why we feel like internally we feel like we've perhaps plateaued slightly because we're a bit confused in ourselves where it's even going to go next.
JESS: We are very protective. We want to make sure it's done for the right reasons. We've had lot of offers from bands which obviously is amazing that people want to be involved but I always kind of want to make sure it's in their interests as much as ours and if someone's mentioned anxiety in one song on one album, it doesn't mean they're going to want to sit there and talk to Don't Fret which is absolutely fine. We’re kind of we're getting ready to record what I'm calling a second season. We've had a bit of a rebrand we'll finally bring the documentary out and then I think we'll just see where the conversation’s at and what people want Don't Fret to be and go from there let people kind of take it for what they want it to be.
We’d like to say a huge thanks to Jess and Jay, and all of our other guests, for dropping by and lending their time to chat with us .
Listen to this and more in the entire interview with Jess and Jay, in the full episode here, give them a follow below, check out our past episodes and stay tuned for our next one (and last one for 2019!) with Laura Imbruglia!
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