Watch out America! Hello Seahorse! is coming from Mexico and bringing with them a sound so unique that you won’t know what hit you. Whether you speak Spanish or not, the dreamy instrumentals accompanied by singer Lo Blondo’s theatrical vocals, are sure to win you over. I caught the band’s recent stop in Los Angeles at the El Rey on Saturday, three dates into their 2011 tour plan for breaking out of Mexico and expanding into the States. Prior to show time, Hello Seahorse’s Bonnz!, Oro de Neta, and Joe poured me a glass of Spanish wine and told me tales of their journey from Mexico to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Congrats on recently releasing your new album, “Lejos, No Tan Lejos,” on iTunes in the US! Were your previous records available on iTunes as well?
Bonnz!: The record before this was also released on iTunes, but it never became available physically. Before that there was an EP and a smaller label from Portland put it out, but there weren’t many copies.

So this is the big deal release then?
Bonnz!: Oh yeah

And when can fans expect the physical copies to be out?
Bonnz!: It will be out in March.

You’ve won MTV Latin America Awards and were nominated for several Grammy’s. How has that influenced your career?
Bonnz!: We’re very happy to have those recognitions. It’s not something that we do because of that. We don’t make music to win awards and stuff but when it comes, we are so happy because somebody is saying that we are making good things. The Grammy experience was amazing. We went to Las Vegas. We went to award shows. It was really good for us.

How was your experience working with Beastie Boy’s producer Money Mark?
Bonnz!: He produced half of the new album and the other half was produced by Yamil Rezc, who is like a fifth member of Hello Seahorse. We produced our previous album with him too. We were very happy to work with Money Mark because he is an amazing musician and an amazing producer. It was an honor to have him on the record.

What is the theme behind the new album?
Bonnz!: When we released the previous album, “Bestia,” we toured in Mexico a lot and our lives kind of changed because the band was very small before that and after “Bestia” it started to grow a lot, very fast. So the new album is all those experiences from releasing “Bestia.” It was very big for us. It was this feeling of leaving some things because of your life as a musician and you have to leave your family and your home and you realize what matters to you.

Is this your first tour playing in the United States?
Joe: We went to play at South by Southwest twice. This is our third time in California.

And you just played Santa Barbara, and Costa Mesa, right?
Bonnz!: And San Diego too.

How were those shows?
Bonnz!: San Diego was amazing. It was the first show of the tour and the first show of the year so it was a good feeling and it went really well. Costa Mesa and Santa Barbara were good too. This has been a great tour.

Joe: I think it’s been a great start for this year.

Bonnz!: This is the last show of the tour. This is a mini tour but we want to come to the US more often. We want to do bigger shows, bigger venues so we’re very excited. It is our focus to get out of Mexico a little bit this year.

So obviously California has a big Spanish speaking population, and Texas too. What about when you guys start moving into other states. Do you think you will start doing some songs in English or maybe throw one or two into the set? Or are you going to keep the songs in Spanish?
Joe: I think we’re happy focusing on Spanish. I think more and more people are accepting our songs in whatever language they come. We’re really comfortable with it. Yesterday we had a show in Santa Barbara and I saw a very mixed audience so I think it’s going to be all right. People will go anyways.

What inspires most of your music?
Joe: I think it’s a combination of different factors: music we listen to, books we read, movies we watch, and a lot of it has to do with the surroundings where we are. For this last record “Lejos, No Tan Lejos” we wrote the songs while being in the forest in the cabin somewhere apart from the city so they sort of grab that essence of being apart from the city.

When you guys do Twitter updates do you have to Tweet in both Spanish and English? How does that work?
Bonnz!: Yeah we Tweet in both languages. So everyone can understand what we are saying.

Joe: I think most of our followers probably understand it whether it’s in English or in Spanish.

What’s interesting is that people can get into music from other countries and not even understand the language or what they are saying. You know you see the audiences in Japan going crazy to rock bands.
Bonnz!: We’re very into that. We think that music is a language. It doesn’t matter if it is in Spanish or English. What matters is if it moves your or not. When we were kids we listened to a lot of bands in English and we didn’t understand a word, for example.

It’s cool too because you listen to it and you get your own impression about what the songs are about…
Bonnz!: Yeah. That’s what we want do with the music is to express a feeling.

How do you guys describe your sound?
Joe: I think our sound is somewhat dreamy – like very ambient music. We try to make sort of this surreal experience I think.

Your singer kind of has a theatrical edge in her voice and in her performance. Was that inspired by musicals? I know she sang in a choir…
Bonnz!: The thing is, we all as musicians always want to do something different. And in every record we change our style of playing.  She was very into this Opera thing and so she said ‘why not, I’m gonna do it.’ We don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. We just want to reinvent ourselves every time.

On that note, how is your newest release different from your past records?
Bonnz!: Now we are a four-piece band. We were three before.

Oro: We got Joe

Bonnz!: When Joe got into the band, the sound changed because he brought some good things to the band.

Joe: Well I think the main difference with the past is that this is an album that we composed, we wrote, while jamming, while the four of us playing at the same time so it comes in a very organic way I think. It’s not as planned or as revisited. It’s really just the four of us playing until we felt that we had something.

Any crazy stories that have happened on the road so far?
Oro: Oh God

Joe: Well we had a very nice experience in San Diego. The hotel was very nice.

Bonnz!: Yeah it was this big suite

Joe: We don’t usually sleep so comfortably so when we get the chance to we enjoy it.

Bonnz!: Being in a band like us, we are not big or anything, we are trying to make it. Sometimes you get these great shows, for example in Monterrey, Mexico we went to this crazy hotel. It was more than five stars hotel and the second time we went to Monterrey we went to this motel. And we play in big venues and then we play in small venues. From one show to another, it changes every time.

Do you guys have groupies or stalkers yet?
Oro: Ahh no. Mostly normal people.

Joe: I think we are fortunate that our fans have been very respectable. I think the closest thing was once there was a girl trying to get on stage and the problem was that she was rushing towards the stage so fast that she could have thrown our amps or our equipment to the floor and damage our equipment. Our staff was able to grab her by her foot but she fell so hard into the floor.

Bonnz!: And hit her face! But I was watching it, Joe, because I saw the fan jumping through the fence like running, running, come to the stage then our production manager was running and got her and as soon as she fell down she started disconnecting all the cables.

Oro: Yeah she got mad.

Bonnz!: And after that she was scratching our stuff.

Maybe next time you should just let them on stage and then remove them once they are up there.
Oro: Good idea!

Have you done anything fun in LA since you’ve been here?
Bonnz!: We love coming to LA actually, it’s like our second home.

Joe: Yeah ‘cause we recorded part of the new album here in LA and it’s sort of why the album is called “Lejos, No Tan Lejos” – Far but not so far.  It’s that sort of home feel here in LA. It’s a different country but it seems so close to being at home. It’s a strange feeling.

Oro: We really like the friendly people here in California. We have met good friends here. It’s good to be here.

Probably San Diego too because you’re really close then.
Oro: Yeah

Bonnz!: We only played twice in San Diego but the first time was in this very small venue and this time was a little bit bigger so that feeling is nice – returning to a city to a bigger place and bigger shows. We like that a lot, starting from zero and going to a different territory. We went to Columbia last year and we played at a festival and a lot of people didn’t know us before and then after the show and they were like, “Ah we love you guys.”

So you played in Mexico, Texas, California, and Columbia. Any other countries?
Oro: Chicago

Bonnz!: But not other countries yet.

Well, you’ll have world domination under your belt soon.
Oro: We hope so

Joe: We hope we can just travel and play. It’s really fun.

Words by Nicole Pajer. Photos by Dustin Downing.

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