The Philly-based, Tally-bred shoegaze band takes on Manhattan.
On his 26th birthday, Edgar Atencio sang “A Dios le Pido” by Juanes and managed to go the whole night without buying a drink. With a Negroni in one hand and a mic in the other, Atencio serenaded Mr. Nancy’s in Ridgewood, a hipster enclave posing as a dive bar that features a Vegan Chili Burger and a romantic painted portrait of JFK. Atencio, lead vocalist and guitarist for Philly shoegaze band Her New Knife, was celebrating the night before the band’s performance with Water From Your Eyes at their sold-out New York show. 24 hours later, Bowery Ballroom would be full of guitar squeals, the offspring of Pixies fans, and canvassers for future mayor Zohran Mamdani. But for now, Atencio had to finish his song.
In a corner booth, birthday guests squished together, fixated on a small box in the center of the table. The box wasn’t really a box, but a custom Her New Knife “Beyblade Battle Arena,” a small, plastic ring for battling tops (recommended for ages 8+) with names like “Storm Pegasus” and “Rock Scorpio.” Thanks to my younger brothers, I’m familiar with the process of winding up the top and releasing it into the plastic arena. As a birthday guest and newbie to the group, I jumped in for three rounds, losing two of them. The red and black arena was gifted to the band by the Rutgers Radio Station, WRSU, after hearing them talk about their “battles” in previous interviews. On r/shoegaze one user–or easily the band trolling–wrote, “i love this band … but I don’t like how they promote gambling . they are always posting about gambling on ‘beyblade’ battles and going to casinos. really not appropriate.”
As the birthday went on, drummer Elijah Ford and Atencio took the stage with an impressive cover of “Would?” by Alice in Chains, while guitarist Ben Kachler and the band’s full-time friend, part-time tour manager, Axel Lagergren, queued up (but never sang) “Kiss Me Thru The Phone.”
I took a seat at a hightop next to bassist Carolina Schooley, who told me the tour was going smoothly and showed me pictures of her cat, Harry, who was waiting back home in Philly. More than half of the bar was connected to Her New Knife in one way or another. Some were friends from their home state of Florida, while others had starred in their music videos. Later that night, the band would crash at Victoria Winter’s place in Queens, the lead singer of Shower Curtain. Ford told me she was an early supporter of the band and helped them book their first shows in New York.
Her New Knife, or HNK, is a young but seasoned group in Philly’s shoegaze hot-bed following the band’s signing to Julia’s War, a label run by Doug Dulgarian of TAGABOW. In the last two years, HNK has played alongside julie, Frost Children, Whirr, and Nothing, earning enough co-signs to cement a humble spot within the rising shoegaze revival. The group released their third and most celebrated EP, chrome is lullaby in late 2024, roughly a year after moving their operation 1,000 miles north from Tallahassee. Their music is somatic, permeating your entire body with rumbling refrains and occasionally sinister basslines. With hints of video game beats and unfinished basement reverb, Her New Knife is a weapon only a Florida Man could wield.
My college friend, a true shoegaze devotee, recommended HNK to me in 2023 after I moved to Philly in a post-graduation haze. Lonely in my new city, I became enamoured with “Ruin,” a catchy, biting song from their 2023 EP, lead dreams/flayed so light, which would later be remixed on 2024’s nightcore+++. The throbbing melody spills everywhere as Atencio sings, “Don’t look away, your hands are stained / This isn’t damage, this is ruin.” I fell farther down the rabbit hole as HNK, and then Bleary Eyed, Hooky, and TAGABOW, became the soundtrack to my solitary winter.
When spring came, I crossed paths with the band in real life at a Philly house party in Gray’s Ferry. I shook Atencio and Kachler’s hands and joined a poker game, while a VHS played in the other room. I hid my inner fangirl for the sake of seeming chill, but soon realized I would never be nearly as chill as “the best damn band in Tallahassee.”
Six years earlier, long before they earned that title, Ford and Atencio, friends from freshman year at Florida State University, were performing in a different band entirely. It was their first serious one, where they “trained for Her New Knife.” Tallahassee had a healthy music scene, unearthed in small rock venues, jazz nights, and outdoor blues shows. Underground, Ethel Cain recorded her early music in Tally’s noise and electronic scene alongside her friend, DJ and producer E_DEATH. Ford and Atencio’s old band was billed alongside Cain and E_DEATH the night the duo performed a cover of Crystal Castles’ “Baptism.”
When the pandemic hit in 2020, their old band unexpectedly paused. Shows stopped entirely and roommates Ford and Atencio had already begun making music on their own, exploring the idea of a sound that favored drone and slowcore over rock and indie. With the college radio station abandoned, the boys saw an opportunity to record their new project in the empty booth.
“Nobody was supposed to be in there, but they had the keys,” Ford said “We just went in and recorded.”
Their first release as HNK, a single called “Piled Up,” was slow and crushing as Atencio’s ethereal vocals collided with a layer of static. Listening to it now feels like peeling a negative off the back of a photograph.
In the fall of 2020, Tallahassee’s music scene was slowly starting up again and Ford and Atencio needed a full band to play live. They recruited a second guitarist, Michael Small, and Atencio approached his co-DJ at the WFVS radio station, Schooley, to play bass. At first, the band struggled to find bands to play shows with after the pandemic steam-rolled the college music scene.
“A lot of venues closed down and in a lot of popular houses, people moved out or were just weird,” Atencio said. “Things that are good in Tallahassee don’t last long, but it’s a beautiful place.”
They ended up playing their first show in Kachler’s college “basement,” a year before he joined the band. Atencio’s former high school jazz classmate in Tampa, Kachler, had a six-foot tall space beneath his house. People still crowd surfed during their set, their bodies grazing the ceiling.
Their favorite place to play was former Tallahassee restaurant Burrito Boarder (2012-2024, RIP), where the band did a kinda fratty, outdoor show for $200 and unlimited food. At some point in 2021, Small, who would go on to form the Colorado nu-gaze band postdr0me, left the band. In search of a new member, Atencio reached out to Kachler to fill in on a show, and from then on, he stuck around.
HNK developed a loyal following in Tallahassee, but Ford and Atencio were thinking of moving their homebase after graduation. If they were going to pursue music, they needed to be in a place with more bands, more places to play, and more shit to see. “Being a band in Florida is hard,” Atencio said. “Touring is difficult when you’re down there. You have to drive a lot to get to other big cities.” They landed on Philly, an affordable alternative with a blossoming scene, and Ford, Atencio, and Ford’s now-fianceé moved together. Kachler followed suit a year or so later, and Schooley after that.
“purepurepure” was the first song Atencio wrote after the move, which signaled a clean slate. Singing, “Figures, sweltering love gestures / Why are you held here, suspended,” Atencio manipulates his voice to the contours of the pulsating melody. The trippy music video features the band riding SEPTA and a stalking, medieval marionette wandering around in the shadows. Atencio made the puppet out of materials found in an abandoned warehouse and bits from the hardware store.
The single ended up being the first taste of chrome is lullaby, but the band agrees that songs don’t become themselves until they have played them for a while. Atencio wrote “kittyriff,” the haunting first track sung in Spanish, after getting the guitar melody stuck in his head for weeks.
“I wrote the whole song and realized the words I was coming up with in English didn’t sound like what I wanted it to be,” Atencio said. “It just made more sense to sing it in Spanish.”
Less than a year into their life in Pennsylvania, HNK was a Philly band, playing in real Northeast basements and exploring abandoned warehouses along the Schuylkill River. What didn’t feel real was a dozen or so friends moving up with them. “Lowkey, we pioneered,” Kachler said. “It was some big exodus.”
The band jokes that they’ve made “Little Tallahassee” in Philly, evident in their 27-person group chat. “I didn’t really expect everybody to move up,” Atencio said.
Back in Ridgewood, I can see why so many did. Between karaoke songs, some people slip out for a cigarette and a joint. It’s starting to get cold and a group huddles around Kachler as he tells us about fishing in Lake Michigan after playing in Detroit. A coho salmon was teasing them, swimming by their bait and unhooking itself if it got caught. At the end of the night, a half hour after last call, Atencio is ready for bed as the band walks back to their home for the night while everyone else slinks off.
The next day, I met the band on Bowery before their sound check. Atencio, unfazed by last night’s Negroni(s), was ready to go. When I asked Kachler how he was feeling, he told me he felt lucky.
It was their last show of the tour. Afterwards, Ford, Kachler, and Schooley would drive back to Philly while Atencio would spend the rest of his birthday weekend in NYC. In their green room, luggage was tucked in one corner while Kachler napped in the other.
Before doors opened, the band went back and forth about the guest list. The stickler venue manager asked HNK to trim their 19-deep guest list to 10. 19 was nothing compared to Little Tallahassee. Ford sent Lagergren to negotiate, but it was unsuccessful. Frustrated, the band weighed their options, all with deep care, as some of their NYC friends came out to support, while others flew in from Florida. Eventually, it was sorted through a combination of pass-sharing and finagling.
At their recent Nashville show, Ford and Schooley told me that Hayley Williams, a fan of Water From Your Eyes, saw at least half of Her New Knife’s last song when she pulled up to the venue. “We were in the same room as her,” Schooley said before Ford added, quietly, that he spoke to her. “Being in a band is awesome,” Atencio said, smiling.
As the lights of the Bowery went down, the backdrop screen fades to black as the words “her new knife” blink behind the band. On the left, Ford wears a hoodie and sunglasses while Kachler faces him directly with his guitar. In front, a decent crowd gathers while others peek their heads in, deciding whether or not to listen. The audience is quiet, waiting patiently as “vitamin beauty” begins. Listeners quickly lock in, holding onto Atencio’s every word before he screams.
As the set goes on, Ford slowly peels away his hoodie and sunglasses as the strobe lights hide and reveal his cymbals. By the last couple songs, the crowd is nodding hard in approval, with old and new fans craning to get a good video before it ends. Schooley’s back is turned, in the zone, while Kachler and Atencio shred like it’s a race.
“They’re really loud,” I heard a middle-aged dude in front of me say to his friend. “But they’re really good.”
I like how they like to fish