Prewn is on the rise

An audio architect, she composes and produces under the musical moniker Prewn, conjuring thick layers of sound that peel like years of old wallpaper – displaying complex patterns and revealing a worn history. Prewn’s latest compilation, System, comes two years after premiere album Through the Window in 2023. And while Through the Window rang out like a ghostly diary entry, System appears both nostalgic and newfangled, opening wide so as to scream into the dark, yet never knowing who might be around to hear.

Prewn first took shape while Hagerup was living in a precious pocket of the country: Western Massachusetts. I was shocked to discover that Hagerup and I are in fact alumni of the same alma mater, a charmingly alternative college called Hampshire. Located in the Pioneer Valley – home to the likes of alt rock icons J. Mascis, Frank Black, and Kim Gordon – Western Mass is a treasure trove of experimental art and sound. “It exposed me to a music scene that I wasn’t really exposed to before,” she confides. “I knew I loved music and liked writing songs, but I’m curious if I would have had the courage, the exposure, and the support to lean into it so hard. I was really in awe, watching the collaboration to make these shows happen, and the community that came with it. It was so exciting to see.”

Get the Best Fit take on the week in music direct to your inbox every Friday

It’s here that Hagerup stepped into another dimension. Years after starting her first musical project Blood Mobile with a college friend, Hagerup released System this past October, a powerhouse of an album, and Prewn has only gained momentum from here. Packed with disparate instrumentation, one notable sound standing out is Hagerup’s cello – the first instrument she learned as a child, and later replaced with guitar. “I think as I got older and got back into music,” she explains, “I was just like ‘What did I do, why did I sell my cello?’”

Thankfully, she bought a new one. And in a brilliant stroke of genius, much of the rhythm of the album is built on the back of the cello’s deepest strings. “Easy” begins the release with feedback noise and loose cello strings, and title track “System” kicks off with Hagerup’s straggly vocals, fused with a scattered string accompaniment that synthesizes into an anthemic call to apathy: “Just give your life away.”

Yet, Prewn is not suggesting anyone give up. Hagerup is sardonically and whimsically saying the quiet parts loud. She wears anxiety on her sleeve, speaking, yet somehow all and only to herself. Listeners are in on the joke, but almost by accident. These songs are in bloom, though they grew in the dark, quiet places between Hagerup’s mind and that inexplicable something that allows for creation. “It’s exploration,” she thinks aloud. “I feel at the whim of whatever that thing is. Whatever that muse is. I don’t know what it is, but I’m so grateful whenever it decides to be my friend.”

Hagerup is unwittingly charming. Between things she wasn’t sure she meant to say, she speaks in off-the-cuff rambles that are as idiosyncratic and raw as her music. Hagerup has a surrealist knack for tapping into the little crooks of the brain, conjuring strange images that just feel both disconcerting and somehow right. “Cavity” is a hallucinatory boat ride down a colourful tunnel, with lyrics that were meant to be gibberish, but somehow fit into the chaos. In “Easy” she sings a humorous “I left you inside of my shoe / And I moved and I moved” with all the sincerity of later track “Forgot”: “In the emptiness I’m her / In the silence I greet her” amid a melancholic wave of mournful lamentation. Is it possible to be funny and tragic in the same breath? Well, yes. And it fits so perfectly to the human condition that Prewn’s sentiments hit hard from all directions.

Alongside distinctive songwriting, Hagerup produces her music in its entirety. She is admittedly starting to collaborate more with other artists, though there is no doubt that Hagerup has a solitary system that works. “I’m building each piece to be this world. It’s self indulgent,” she cracks a smile. “I just want to make it how I want to hear it, and it just feels good.” But self indulgence translates into a fine-tuned, detail-oriented production – she knows what she wants, and she’ll sit in her studio until the dawn cracks in order to get it. “That process of building it before your eyes, and obsessively…” she adds, “My ears are aching and I’m not going to be able to listen to music for two days after this, but I just have to make it sound how I want.”

“There’s just the highest high that I get from that process,” Hagreup tells me from her new sunny LA home. “Making it candy to my ears, on my own in the middle of the night… I’m very attached to that process.” It may be daytime now, but she’s made it clear that her production schedule runs on vampire time. “Even if I get there at 2pm,” she laments a bit, “I kind of just have to struggle or be bored or just play it through until 10 or 11pm.” And then, when there is definitely no one around to hear, she can fixate, writing and layering tracks in her studio.

To Hagerup, life experience is the key to unlocking creation. “I’m chasing experiences, for better or for worse,” she says. While she’s up for adventure in the form of a cross-country move – she recently relocated to the West Coast – or an international sojourn, day-to-day routine is a bit of a wildcard. “I’m always trying to have a routine that would involve reading for an hour and going for a hike up the mountain,” she admits. “But a lot of the time, I fall into the abyss of fatigue and boredom and sabotage.”

Prewn’s sound is anything but boring. It’s raw, confusing, and soothing all at the same time. From winding guitar and emphatic stings, to ardent vocals and an exploratory vibe through the production, the sounds of Hagerup’s studio-cave bring forth her most experimental nature. Bringing that practice to the stage has been its own adventure, as Hagerup is considering having many different groups of backing players in different locations, perhaps one symptom of extraordinarily difficult DIY touring conditions. She confesses, “I just love being alone and doing my own thing. Maybe have some intimacy issues with depending on people – being dependent.”

And yet, as Prewn prepares for an upcoming tour this March – with Hagerup’s East Coast band traversing west – she is seizing this moment. “I want everyone to feel like, ‘You’re part of this.’”