Hydra Fashion Week are fascinatingly hard to pin down. Each song on their debut record, Serpent Season One, could be the work of a different band. The 12 track project cycles through autotuned jangle-pop, jerky, jass-punk and dramatic, almost literary songs that could be from a musical.

But there’s a throughline, a uniqueness of vision that comes from front person Charlie Teitelbaum. That sort of great tip-of-your-tongue feeling where you can’t quite explain it, you just have to kind of listen.

Our latest Independent Artist of the Week, Charlie chatted with Benny on Up For It about how this vision of Hydra Fashion Week had long been germinating in their mind.

“I kind of had it in my head before I started the band. It’s kind of what I dreamed up as a teenager.”

Charlie may front Hydra Fashion Week, but they stress how contributions from other members Matt Roche, Emily Chen and Jasper Evans have pushed the album to exciting and unexpected new directions. Collaboration is important to the band’s live show too, performing at their launch with an interpretive dance collective who both improvise on stage, but also recreate a dance that Charlie’s sister choreographed for single Total Freefall.

It all makes for an eclecticism that Charlie didn’t exactly recognise at the time of making Serpent Season One, but has reflected upon since hearing people’s thoughts on the record.

“I do feel that [it] reflects the way younger people listen to music… I mean I could have just made a punk album, but most people I know listen to, like, all different types of music. So I kind of embraced that part of myself.”

Listen back to Charlie’s full interview with Benny above, and buy/stream Serpent Season One below.