With Descending Dreams arriving July 31, Tāmaki Makaurau-based HINA shares a third glimpse into the album’s world with new single ‘The Fountain,’ out now. Arriving on a woozy gospel-country groove, the song feels loose-limbed and gloriously unhurried, recorded in a single take, the full band playing live together in a room. The fountain itself, as HINA frames it, is deliberately nameless — an image that shifts depending on who’s holding it.
“It’s a vessel for whatever you need it to hold: validation, reassurance, emotional certainty, a relationship, a vice, an inner voice. This song is about searching for meaning, seeking answers that may never come,” she says. “It’s also about internalised blame becoming belief, self-doubt becoming doctrine, and destructively repeating this all like a mantra.”
The track’s video takes the same approach. Shot in natural light in an open paddock, the video mirrors the song’s spirit. “I wanted the video to capture that same organic instinct and feel uninhibited and straightforward,” says HINA. “My previous videos have had layered metaphors and hidden meanings. I don’t think this is what this song needs. It’s fun, it’s easy, and much like the song, it’s me letting go and trusting that what will be will be.”
HINA – The Fountain
Recorded at Roundhead Studios with producer Navakatoa Tekela–Pule (Noa Records) and refined alongside James Milne (Lawrence Arabia), the album drew in some of Aotearoa’s most trusted musical voices: Dave Khan, Tiare Kelly, Stenn Frances-Deare, Hamish Milne, De Stevens, Finn Scholes, and a string quartet featuring Sandy Niu and Olivia Wilding each lending their hands, ears, and creative instincts to the record. Engineer Paddy Hill expertly mixed the record, giving the final work its shape.
‘The Fountain’ is a microcosm of what Descending Dreams does best — finding grace in the unresolved. The debut album emerges from a period of personal turbulence, tracing complex relationships and the gradual reclamation of the self. With orchestral strings and dusty country cadences, HINA continues in the lineage of Aotearoa’s wahine singer-songwriters (Bic Runga, Nadia Reid, Brooke Fraser), shaping a debut album that transforms personal upheaval into a shared, living space of sound – aching and luminous in equal measure.
“The album now seems to trace how I tried to make sense of things that didn’t need to make sense in the way that I was looking for,” says HINA. “I searched for meaning in glances, in tone, in coincidence, in acts of God. I was trying to be devoted. I was trying to be brave. I was trying to endure. This album is now the record of that love.”
Descending Dreams is available to pre-order now and will be released digitally and on vinyl. Secure your copy here.
HINA celebrates the release of Descending Dreams with a live show in Tāmaki Makaurau at Kāhui St David’s on Thursday August, 6. With support from Na’amah Cheiban and joined by her band Dave Khan (Marlon Williams, Reb Fountain, The Veils), Fen Ikner (LIPS, Anna Coddington), Hamish Morgan (Marlin’s Dreaming), and Francesca Parussini (Wāhine in Jazz), who will bring the record to life, tickets are available from Under The Radar.
HINA – Descending Dreams
Out July 31
South Pacific Sun
Coucou!
River To Mouth
The Fountain
House Within A Room
Hope Has Teeth
Take Apart Me
India
Back To The Fire
Hollywood Graves
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