HORNET’s “Precious body” is a survival anthem steeped in childlike revelry

Like the frostbite HORNET sings about, the sound of “Precious body” has a crystallising quality. After jagged-edged percussion and icy, skittering synthesizers cut into the mix, something sweet oozes out. It comes after her last single “Cafe L”, a hard-hitting industrial-tinged confessional about the typical love-hate relationship between a Londoner and their city.

The obvious word to describe the chorus of “Precious body“ is “anthemic“, as HORNET herself labels it. However, its real strength is in the restraint she employs in her vocal performance, choosing to let the wandering melody and rich chord arrangements provide the necessary gravitas to her singing. While HORNET is not the originator of this style, she uses it to great effect. Her more emphatic moments of singing are all the more dazzling as they burst forth from more controlled, elegant sections. Somehow, she’s reached back through time to the 13-year-old listening to Sleigh Bells and Santigold, and dosed her songs with that elusive childlike revelry.

The technical sorcery on display in HORNET's production lifts her sound in equal measure to her inspired songwriting choices. She would tell you that her projects in Logic Pro, her chosen DAW, remind her of a Nintendo game: “Yeah, I don't use Logic in the right way, I kind of just finesse it until I like the way it sounds, but I'm sure a real producer would look at it and be like ‘you have something wrong with you’. When I look at my stems, I'm like ‘jeez it looks like Tetris’”. The result of HORNET's finessing and tinkering are all too fully wrought to believe her self-effacing commentary.

She toiled with the song for nearly a year, until the sound of children laughing in the park turned the proverbial key and unlocked the song’s core. “It reminded me of ‘Kids’ by MGMT,” she explains. “It definitely made me think I wanna make an anthemic kind of song, that makes me feel like I'm 13 or I'm in the school courtyard and I'm screaming over my friends.“

HORNET first emerged with her 2024 EP feline, an underground favourite among London tastemakers like Sunnbrella. After securing her UK Global Talent visa, she's been steadily building momentum through collaborations – including one with BIG BAG – and a breakout performance at this year’s inaugural SXSW London. With a new EP titled 253a well street out today (November 26), she’ll be celebrating the release with an intimate listening party hosted by Waste! Store London.

“Precious body” is the closing of a chapter, a capper to the EP both narratively and literally. If HORNET spent a year looking for the right moment to inspire the completion of “Precious body”, safe to say it was a year well spent. Your parents may not agree, but her mother was, in fact, a driving influence in the creation of this track about a breakup. Earnest lyrics speak of this: “My mother’s a rockstar, she just doesn’t know yet”. “She would just be there for me over the phone,” says HORNET. “She helped me a lot through that time.“