Hana Stretton ends her wordless white winter

I last spoke to Hana Stretton in 2023, four years after she’d written her debut cult-hit record Soon during the apocalyptic Australian wildfire summer of 2019. Back then, only a track titled “The Thrill of Loneliness” graced online communities in its virality, alongside a SoundCloud burner account called Nora’s Bin housing otherwise unpublished demos. Three years after our last call, where I was told about the billowing smoke creating a horrifying backdrop to her grandma’s farm, Stretton tells me she just got a 43-degree train from Paris to the south of France, unable to breathe.“I’ve now had four or five situations trapped in small spaces with unbearable heat,” she says.By contrast, Stretton self-produced Soon in the expansive outback after her grandma, Bid, passed away. Looking after the family farm solo was never the plan. Her father covered riots as a journalist in D.C. and her mother faced another blaze elsewhere, both unable to return. This happenstance provided enough space and solitude for Stretton to hear her own thoughts, and the pivotal moment for her musical visions to materialise. Sign up to Best Fit's Substack for regular dispatches from the world of pop culture Often...