cookii break down their sound and alias on Mornings with Louisa Thurn

August 18th 2022

 

  • cookii :: Interview with Louisa Thurn

You’ll be familiar with cookii’s music even if you haven’t heard it before. Bright, brash and bubblegummy, it’s the sound of all the pop culture you grew up with. The Melbourne-based duo showcase everything from from pop rock to hyperpop across their two EPs, tapping into a high octane nostalgia that will get you moving every single time. They caught up with Louisa Thurn on Mornings to chat origin stories, the evolution of their sound, and their latest collaboration with Lonelyspeck and Hearteyes. 

In 2022, we know cookii as a duo that fully embraces the limelight, but that hasn’t always been the case. They were once shrouded in mystery, and they used cookii as more of an alias than a band name. It was the moniker of an imaginary teenage girl. 

“We sort of strangely realised that writing from the perspective of a character and sort of [separating] from ourselves made it a lot easier and a lot more fun… Who is cookii? How can we be her?”
“Yeah we started writing from the perspective of not just us – kind of like a teenage girl character, and Blossom kind of came naturally from there.”

Grounding themselves in their music in lieu of a teenage girl isn’t the only waycookii have expanded their sound; their second EP draws on a different type of nostalgia than the first. It was a switch from poppy electronica to music Louisa described as coming from the end of a 90s/ early 2000s coming of age film. 

They told  Louisa that, like the chicken and the egg, it’s difficult to discern whether the music had changed because of the lyrics or the other way around. Regardless, cookii has grown out of adolescences and communicates ideas differently.

“I started thinking lyrically from my point of view as we started to write pop style a little bit more, that it wasn’t actually giving me any truth to my personality, so I wanted to start drawing on myself a little bit more so yeah it feels a little more real world to me too.”

cookii have pushed the boundaries of their music even further on their latest releases. New singles ‘METAL FLAKE’ and ‘WEIRDO’ see them team up with fellow Coalesce Records heavy hitters Lonelyspeck and Hearteyes to strike the perfect balance between ethereal and cathartic. The band told Louisa about their unlikely collaborative process. 

“We have to thank Lonelyspeck for being the most genius writer in the entire world. We kind of gave each other beats through email and all of us really connected with two of Lonelyspeck’s beats which ended up being ‘WERDO’ and ‘METAL FLAKE’. And I guess it was all over email because we’re all from different places.”

Sounds cool right? You can stream ‘METAL FLAKE’ below, or listen back to cookii’s full interview with Louisa Thurn up top.

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