Hayden Thorpe

Hayden Thorpe first rose to attention as the high-voiced leader of the respected British indie outfit Wild Beasts. Working alone, he has kept exploring the same subjects of the natural world, physical desire, and male identity. The 2019 album Diviner steered toward personal ballad confessions with greater closeness, whereas 2021’s Moondust for My Diamond broadened the palette through electronic textures. Drawing on Robert Macfarlane’s novel of the same name, Thorpe’s third record, Ness, issued in 2024, wove in a chamber ensemble and timbres produced by plants and seeds.

His path opened at sixteen when he and school friend Ben Little launched the duo Fauve in 2002. After two years and several personnel shifts the project became Wild Beasts, stamping British indie with a theatrical, sensual character. Their loose-limbed chamber-pop arrangements, driven especially by Thorpe’s plunging falsetto, drew strong reviews; the 2009 release Two Dancers earned a 2010 Mercury Prize nomination. The band sustained its singular voice on 2014’s Smother, which entered the Top Ten of the U.K. Albums Chart, and on the 2017 John Congleton-produced Boy King. Wild Beasts then dissolved.

More than a year of farewells followed, including the 2017 Punk Drunk and Trembling EP and a 2018 tour whose final shows were documented on the live set Last Night All My Dreams Came True, captured at RAK Studios.

The week after that last concert, Thorpe entered the studio with Leo Abrahams to shape reflective, piano-centered pieces touched by disco and electronics. Tracking took place across London, Kendal, and Cornwall during 2018 with Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa on drums and modular-synth specialist Benge. Released in May 2019 on Domino Records, the former band label, Diviner reached number 16 on the U.K. Album Charts. The next year brought the Aerial Songs EP, born from a residency at Cumbria’s Aerial Festival and made with Bullion, Richard Formby, and Fabian Prynn. Formby and Bullion also joined him for Moondust for My Diamond, a dense electronic collection meditating on the world’s marvels, issued by Domino in October 2021.

For his third album Thorpe looked to Robert Macfarlane’s 2019 novel Ness, set at a disused Suffolk weapons-research facility. Working with the Propellor Ensemble, whose members include clarinetist Jack McNeill, and with vocalist and choral arranger Kerry Andrew, he merged experimental orchestral writing, pop, folk, and sounds generated by seeds and thistles. Ness appeared on Domino in September 2024.