UCLA Radio’s Rising Artist Spotlight aims to highlight upcoming artists who have demonstrated unique creativity and talent through their music. Through interviews and features, we delve into their journey, influences, and aspirations, giving listeners a glimpse into the future of music.
Photos Courtesy of Her New Knife
Formed in Tallahassee and based in Philadelphia, Her New Knife are a 4-piece shoegaze band that have turned heads for their fresh approach to the shoegaze sound, borrowing from the dissonant instrumental palettes of post-punk and post-hardcore, paired with a sense for vast, brash, lush dynamics that arguably rank them at the forefront of the current shoegaze landscape.
They seem to be hitting their stride, having just come off a US tour with aesthete indie rockers julie in the Fall, as well as having just released their fourth EP, chrome is lullaby, via They Are Gutting a Body of Water’s label Julia’s War.
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Her New Knife’s guitarist and lead vocalist Edgar Atencio and their drummer Elijah “da kid” Ford for a Zoom interview, hoping to get to know them a little better, and hopefully glean a sense for where they’re headed.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity purposes.
Interviewed by Chloe Gonzales & Brooke Ortiz
Brooke Ortiz: Does she have other knives?
Edgar Atencio: No.
BO: What’s with the specification?
Elijah Ford: It was in a book, thought it sounded cool.
BO: What was the book?
Elijah: Fear and Loathing.
BO: That’s a good one. Are you stars or polka dots?
Elijah: I’m a star.
Edgar: Yeah, both stars.
Brooke: Would you say that your bandmates are stars or polka dots?
Elijah: Ben’s a polka dot. Caroline is a star, yeah?
Chloe Gonzales: Only one’s a polka dot, interesting. So, your latest EP is chrome is lullaby, which was released in October 2024. I particularly enjoyed the music video to the song, “purepurepure.” Take me through the process of getting those clips and creating that music video.
Edgar: It was shot and edited by a friend of ours named David Luna, and he listened to the song a lot and kind of came up with this–like a bunch of ideas and themes. And one day we were just sitting at home and I thought of building this, like, marionette, that’s the little puppet that you see in the video. We went to the hardware store and found a bunch of random materials and built it and used it a lot. We didn’t know how puppet making was done but it was a cool experience to do it. You don’t really know how to do it but it’s cool when become it comes out not really normal, like it has all these messed up, different sized, limbs. It was jank but it was cool. We shot it in different places in Philly, he had this idea to do the train shot and it took us a while to shoot, even though it’s only a couple of seconds long. But it was cool.
CG: [forgetting about the end of the video] Do you take the marionette with you on tour at all?
Edgar: We actually destroyed it at the end of the video, it was pulled apart and stuff.
BO: Did you just throw it away? Or in someone’s garage?
Edgar: That’s a great question, I’m actually not sure where it is.
BO: Some crazy fans are going to dig it out of a Philadelphia dumpster.
Edgar: Yeah, I have no idea what I did with it. I don’t totally remember
[Elijah turns on a Zoom function that turns him into a CGI cat]
CG: Interspecies band, I love it.
BO: Are you guys on the record as being furries?
Elijah: You guys can see that I was doing that?
[continued chatter about the furry thing]
BO: All right, you guys have been active for about five years or now with a consistent output of almost entirely EPs. Was that an intentional choice? Did you decide at one point that the EP format was something that your music lends itself to, or is it something that came naturally or just happens every single time that you guys build up a backlog?
Edgar: I think it’s just that we didn’t really have a lot of songs written all at one time and so whenever we were in the position to record, it was always just whatever was new which was pretty much three to five songs. We’ve always thought about writing a record but it makes a lot more sense to just put music out whenever you can instead of waiting until you feel like you’re ready to do this big task, having to constantly tell people that this thing is gonna be out or done soon. It’s just cool to put music out and not really treat the project itself as a whole thing. It’s just about putting songs out and writing songs.
Elijah: I think we focused a lot on playing shows. It’s hard to record and with us in particular, takes a long time because we don’t really do it a lot so we’re kind of bad at it. We just played a lot of shows and in the very little free time we would record a few songs, but we never had 10 songs all at once that weren’t already out. So I don’t know, but it’s coming soon.
BO: So there’s something kicking around there, as far as a big record.
Elijah: Yeah, we’re recording this summer. Probably starting this month.
BO: That makes a lot of sense though, when there’s an album that is being hyped up, it almost becomes like an adversarial thing between the artist and the fans that are impatient for it. We saw that with Playboi Carti and I’m sure it was just miserable for him.
Elijah: Yeah, I think it’s cool to play shows and shit. You can play shows, record, and release stuff, but, at least for us, it’s hard to record in our freetime and play the amount of shows that we play. Usually when we play, we only play a couple of songs that are out already and then the rest of them are songs that we are working on, which has always been the thing. By the time the new release comes out, we’ve already been playing the songs for around a year, you know? So I think that’s kind of cool. I don’t like when people don’t play new songs that they’ve been sitting on for a year because the record that they’re on isn’t out yet. I think that’s stupid.
BO: Not married to the physical media and to the rollout. You just want the music to be out there.
Elijah: And it’s also different, the recorded version and the live version.
Edgar: The songs change the more we play them live. So we never really write a song and then immediately record it because it’ll change and get cooler as we play it.
BO: And is it always something that you notice when you start playing things differently? Do you look back at an old recording of one of your sets, how you played a song for the first time like, “What the hell? I can’t believe it sounded like that.”
Elijah: Honestly sometimes it’s cool to look back and listen to how things sounded differently.
BO: But those changes are always conscious.
Edgar: Yeah, I mean little things by little things whether or not that be like all the time. It’s like we’re playing a different part. Sometimes it’s one day I play louder or strum this thing, a lot of that and also the whole band getting more comfortable with the music that lends itself to sounding different for us. For me especially.
Elijah: I’ll make little changes with some of the songs and then be like, “Oh that was kind of cool,” or “Oh, that was ass. I’m never going to do that again.” They add up over time.
CG: Does the audience play a role in these changes at all? I guess since they’re small changes, they’re not gonna notice it a bit, especially if they’re not out yet. But do you ever garner reactions from them?
Edgar: I feel like things are cemented if they feel cool. I feel like there’s always going to be someone who thinks what you’re doing is cool, but if you don’t feel like it’s cool then, you know.
Elijah: Yeah, I don’t know. I can’t see shit in the back. They’re always blasting lights in my fucking eyes. I can’t see what people are even doing in the audience.
Edgar: People will come to our shows and they’re like, “Hey, you should play this song,” and it’s something from previous releases, or somebody came up the other day with a sign that had a song that we used to play, years ago, when we still lived in Florida. And he was like, “Oh please play this song on the sign”.” And I was just like, “I’m gonna be honest, I don’t even remember how to play that,” like, “I’m sorry.”
BO: It’s only really an interest in just playing whatever you want to, especially the new stuff?
Elijah: Yeah. Like I said, we’re just in a weird cycle because by the time a release comes, for an EP for example, that came out in October, we’ve been playing most of those songs throughout the year prior. So I’m sure people have heard them before and now we’re kind of bored of the songs, they’re kind of old in my head even though they’re new songs. It’s funny that people that are just now getting into us like after the julie tour, during the julie tour, they’re like “Oh, I just discovered you guys, play this song!” And it’s like bro, you were two years late, we don’t even play that song anymore. We’ve played it 100 times.
BO: Is it different now, having been on tour with julie and TAGABOW [They Are Gutting A Body of Water] versus when you were playing in the local scene, the way that you approach our music and the way that people approach your music changes, with first being based in the Tallahassee scene and then the Philadelphia scene? How does that feel different from touring?
Elijah: I don’t know. It feels the same, at least for me it didn’t really change much. Playing bigger stages doesn’t feel really different. Even the first one, the biggest venue before that tour we had played was probably a 500 cap room and then we’re playing like a 2500 cap theater. But it didn’t feel any different, I wasn’t more nervous or anything. I would say the only big change honestly was like, “Fuck we should have brought a merch person.” There’s a lot more moving parts and a big tour– the main thing we didn’t notice was like bringing roadies, the boring logistical stuff.
BO: Do you guys have a touring manager now? I’m sure [you do].
Edgar: Not technically, but Elijah is definitely the most responsible out of the four of us.
Elijah: Yeah, I hold it down. We bring our friend Axel, he sells merch.
Edgar: We say he’s the tour manager. I’m like, “Ask him questions.”
Elijah: And he cannot answer them, he doesn’t know anything.
Edgar: One time we played this show and he lied to someone and said he was in the band because somebody walked up to him at the merch table. He said, “Sometimes,” and they asked “Oh, what do you do?” And he was nervous and lied.
Elijah: Then they saw him later and all of us were together and then they realized that he didn’t play and he apologized to them.
BO: He probably made them buy merch, so you should probably be thanking him.
[incoherent chatter]
Elijah: –my guy. We have a shirt right now that’s an ambiguous design— it’s like veils, dresses, type of things. And whenever boys will come up to buy the shirt and ask what it is, he’s like, “Oh, it’s bullet casings,” “Oh, it’s arrowheads.” And then girls will come and he’s like, “Oh they’re wedding dresses.”
CG: Tailored to the audience, I respect. Do you guys prefer playing house shows versus big venues? How has that transition been like?
Edgar: I think that it feels really great to play on a stage where you can hear yourself and the drums because then the music, you play it with more confidence since it actually sounds how it should sound. Whereas sometimes when you play a house show that can be kind of annoying, but I think I’ll always love playing house shows. Like the best thing about playing a big venue really isn’t the crowd or how big the room is, it’s really how nice the sound system is. The vibe of playing a house show that’s crazy packed and lit, you can’t really get that just anywhere, you know? That’s always going to be special.
BO: Do kids at house parties you’ve played at, do they try to mosh?
Edgar: It depends on where you are, because in Philly, people who go to house shows are there to be nonchalant—people in Philly don’t really move like that. They just hit the arms-crossed-head-nodding. But if you go somewhere like Florida, house shows are lit as fuck, because it happens less frequently, I guess. But it really depends on where you are.
BO: You prefer the crazier ones, or do you prefer like the deep house junkie, like the nodders?
Edgar: I prefer the crazier ones.
Elijah: I like when people are lit. People in Philly, I think they enjoy their music as much but I don’t know if people go to more shows here, so they’re a little more jaded or maybe they really are the deep house junkie. But as someone playing the show, it’s definitely more fun when people are physically having a good time. It’s way more lit with the younger people coming to shows, especially during the julie tour.
CG: I wonder if it’s also like in Philly it’s just another thing to do versus like in Tallahassee or at least the Midwest, that’s the big event, the thing of the day.
Edgar: In Nebraska, it was so crazy.
CG: I feel like one of the factors is where you play. Because [in rural, suburban areas] they make their own fun out of it, because what else is there to do?
Elijah: Philly particularly, I don’t like to play because people are like [nonchalant] every show, it’s like, “Damn, do we suck?” Even on the julie tour, we played Philly and that was the exact halfway point to the tour and probably the only show on that tour where we finished playing and was like, “Damn, we must not be very good. This audience really was not fucking with us.” But Philly’s just notorious for that.
Edgar: We played a show the other night in Atlanta and there were kids getting sturdy to just like the weirdest songs that we played, like you do not need to be doing that.
BO: Kids in the pit are always trying to do something that someone else will take a photo of and post on their Instagram.
Elijah: Okay, yeah, this is a tangent but I always be fucking hating on these kids– like the quirkiest audience member contest like y’all need to grow up.
BO: Like I have a fidget spinner, I’m recording with a DS, I have a spinny cap on…
Elijah: Like, have a good time and stuff, but when you pull up to the show in a banana costume, you’re just being annoying– as a performer, it’s annoying because, I don’t give a fuck if everyone has their attention on us and you’re like, “Oh, it’s all about us!”, you’re a dork because you’re trying to do that. It’s like, bro, do y’all get out of the house much?
CG: How do y’all feel about music reviews and receiving them?
Edgar: Sometimes I’ll read our music reviews and it reads like AI.
Elijah: Dude, I swear half of them are AI! Or we’ll get them and they’re way too articulate. It’s like, dude, you’re overanalyzing the shit out of this. Like, we weren’t even thinking about this when we were writing the song. It’s like, “This is about this family matter and blah blah.” And it’s like, dude, this song is just lit. No, I think they’re cool though. Like when we were on Stereogum, obviously we’re like, “Yo, let’s fucking go!” But I don’t think we’re reading them and being like okay, I really care what this music journalist has to say about the song. It’s interesting, but I’m not butthurt if they don’t like it.
BO: And you’re not taking notes either…
Elijah: Yeah.
BO: Or are you? Do you get any sense of direction or anything from that kind of feedback?
Elijah: I don’t really but I think it’s interesting to hear from a person that sees a lot of shows, what they thought about the show and what was unique about it.
Edgar: There’s a difference for sure because there’s the publication music review and then there’s like a middle aged woman in the crowd recording the set on her iPhone for her radio show. And I think the second is way more interesting to read.
Elijah: I like people that don’t know anything about us and they write a review and they’re like, “I never heard of Her New Knife. I was actually here to write for blank but here I am writing about the opener that I had never heard about.” It’s an interesting perspective. We haven’t had a hater-ass review yet though, so I’m kind of waiting for that.
BO: Do you have some sense about why people are Her New Knife fans and not just fans of any other person or band playing in your scene? What do you think people are attracted to about your band specifically?
Edgar: I feel like for a long time, we sat in this category of like definitely a shoegaze band and then the more that we played and songs we wrote it started to become like, “Okay, we’re not playing shoegaze, but people call us a shoegaze band.” And I feel like the reason why people might be intrigued by us is they feel like they’ll come and see us and expect something more slowcore, or shoegaze, or more like our old stuff, and they’ll see us now and it’s something noisier and more dissonant and just a departure from what normal modern shoegaze is. I feel like people can appreciate how it’s kind of different.
Elijah: I would agree with that. I also think the biggest part, or at least I hope, is because I focus a lot on the live performance, we all do, and I think that’s really important. Not necessarily orchestrating what we’re gonna do on stage and thinking really hard about “we have to be super lit when we’re playing live!” It’s about letting loose and being free on stage and taking up space and really rocking the fuck out every night, giving it your all. I just hate when motherfuckers be standing on the stage and not getting lit, you know? I hope that people like us because we don’t do that.
BO: Do you owe that to all of the time you spent in a local scene, playing all of the shows there, being on tickets often with similar bands? You’d be playing with them over and over– do you feel competitive? Do you feel like you’re trying to show anyone out?
Edgar: I don’t think there’s really another way to be. Even if I did think about it I couldn’t really just not express myself physically.
Elijah: I think it’s definitely a subconscious thing that I do for sure because consciously have to tell myself, “Yo chill out” when I’m playing sometimes. Especially when we’re on tour it’s really physically exhausting. I’ll play sometimes and like bust my hand open and really be straining, getting too lit, and physically have to be like, “Yo, calm down. You got five more shows.” So I think after playing a bunch of shows and getting lit at them we were kind of like, “Oh, this is the most fun way to perform.” and that’s just what we do now. That’s wonderful, at least for me. Edgar’s kind of the same. Carolina gets lit in her own way. When she gets that head nodding, you know she’s in the zone.
BO: Do you guys feed off each other’s energy?
Elijah: I’m still waiting for the day she [Carolina] turns around into the drum kit and throws a leg up on the bass drum and plays like they did in the old rock n’ roll days.
BO: You guys are hardcore at heart.
Elijah: Thanks. We’re trying to play with the hardcore bands.
CG: If you could write a score for any film director, who would it be?
Elijah: Let me pull up my Letterboxd. The dude that did The Lobster, Yorgos Lanthimos, I like his movies a lot. I think they’re interesting and funny and not too serious, but not in like comedic breaks that are corny way, they’re funny because the characters are kind of quirky. Obviously David Lynch, but I feel like a lot of people would say that.
Edgar: I would love to write a score for a Saw movie.
Elijah: That would be fire. We like the Saw movies a lot. We watched them all together.
BO: Can I get your guy’s Letterboxd top four?
Elijah: Godzilla Minus One is number one. That was like the best movie to come out in the past five years. A Futile and Stupid Gesture, which is like a documentary– I don’t even know if it’s a documentary but like a dramatized documentary about the dudes that started the National Lampoon and it’s really cool. Then Under the Skin, which is fire, soundtracks fire. It’s a slow burn. A lot of it is candid shots of people that aren’t actors, which is cool. And then My Life as a Zucchini, which is a French stop motion claymation thing. I think it’s made for kids but it’s really sad and sweet about kids growing up in an orphanage.
BO: Name the most important thing in the world,
Elijah: Money, because I fuck with money heavy. Or gambling? I think gambling is cooler.
Edgar: No regrets.
BO: Make a wish.
Edgar: Can’t tell you.
Elijah: Unlimited money.
CG: Name the worst album ever made.
Elijah: I don’t know about anything ever made but the new Linkin Park is ass.
CG: I think you guys also did college radio before so I was wondering what your DJ names would be now, compared to what you had before?
Edgar: Carolina and I were both DJs. Carolina’s DJ name was DJ Carolina and my DJ name was DJ Edgar and I feel like if it was now her DJ name would probably still be DJ Carolina and mine would probably still be DJ Edgar.Elijah: I did community college so I wasn’t a DJ but I would be DJ Flo Rida. Or no, DJ Da Kid, because in one interview I did they said that my name was Elijah “Da Kid” Ford for some reason.
Listen to Her New Knife here!
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