Review and photos by: Frannie Edwards-Hughes

Sweet, love in its early days, a Southern summer, a walk by yourself when the sun’s going down—or maybe it’s coming up—praying for a friend every night, getting older each day, it’s all familiar, I don’t recognize myself from a year ago.

This is what Hovvdy sounds like to me.

I remember hearing them for the first time in the backseat of my dad’s old 4Runner, my older brother driving. I was laid out among the sprawled clothes and trash that had been gathering for months. Too hot for the A/C to do anything but spit out warm air, so the windows were cracked. I fell in love with “Problem,” the second track off their 2017 album Taster. I heard a sort of indie distortion that pulled me in. Every lyric—something ordinary—but strung together with Charlie’s voice, felt bigger. It was connectable.

I lost touch with their music for a while, but I fell back into it at the start of this school year, early September. Their latest self-titled album took their lyrics to the next level, blending heavy emotions with an electronic indie hybrid. I loved that I could dance and move freely to a song of theirs, but also sit quietly with Julie’s Version—a stripped-down, acoustic live set of four songs from the album.

I got to see them live two weekends ago at The Crocodile, a venue in downtown Seattle. I caught a ride in my friend’s yellow Chevy Aveo. One of those cars that sits real low to the ground—you can almost feel the road underneath your feet, like there’s no separation. We were running late and worried about missing even a second, so I hopped out at a red light on Blanchard Street and hurried into the venue. Squeezing and apologizing as I weaved through the crowd, I found a spot up by the stage.

Hovvdy shuffled on with their personable smiles and worn-out Blundstones. They played a 17-song set—18 counting “True Love” for the encore—pulling mostly from their latest self-titled album, but also mixing in songs from True Love (2021), Heavy Lifter (2019), and even a couple from Taster (2017). I appreciated how they blended old and new, played acoustic versions of some tracks, and used their distortion mic to recreate that same feeling their recorded music has.

I was drawn to the fact that they’re a two-frontmen band—switching up who sang, who played guitar, sharing harmonies. There’s this lovely friendship between Charlie and Will that you can feel as they dance around the stage together, strumming their guitars in sync. Their energy bounced between them, then spilled out into the crowd. We all sang and danced, head-banging and silly.

The crowd felt like a kind of community. That feeling got even stronger when my friend and I realized we were standing next to the same couple we had stood beside a few weeks earlier at the MJ Lenderman show. We laughed about the predictability of our genre of people.

The sweetness of the evening was what stuck with me—and what made it one of my favorite shows I’ve seen in Seattle. Given how much I write about people, I feel like I have a pretty strong sense of character. Hovvdy’s love and care were shining through—in their lyrics, their little thank-yous between songs, the crowd’s involvement, and even after the show, when Charlie and Will stuck around to talk with everyone waiting in the merch line.

The warmth lingered after the music faded, even as we missed two exits on the way home. Every mistake, every hard-hitting moment—it felt golden. Like maybe I could write about it later, or use it in a song.