The debut EP from London-based outfit Bande à Part is titled Grit, and it was born of it, too. It began in the East London warehouse the band called home, where days started by climbing out of bed and into rehearsals, trading instruments, and coaxing life from burnt-out guitars and broken amps. Those months forged the band’s raw, instinctive sound, before it was committed to wax in a studio just five minutes down the road with producer Alberto De Torre, whose approach was to catch the band live – as they are best.

You can hear that proximity throughout Grit. Nothing feels overworked or ornamental; each song carries the marks of its making. Guided by freeform compositions that draw as much from Swans as they do Miles Davis and Bach, the record shifts between abrasion and restraint, structure and improvisation. Its stream-of-consciousness lyrics, written instinctively during rehearsals, capture fleeting thoughts in real time, preserving the spontaneity of the band’s creative process.

Fronted by musician and writer Sabina Hellstrom (guitar, vocals), alongside Mary Elizabeth (guitar), Gennaro Romano (bass), Craig Whyte Doporto (drums), and Miles Lavelle-Golding (keys, percussion), Bande à Part emerge from a close-knit community of artists and musicians – including October and the Eyes, Alexander Carey-Morgan, and Stella Rose – absorbing the energy of their contemporaries while carving out a sound unique to them. In anticipation of the EP’s release, Hellstrom takes us through its making alongside exclusive images from the Grit artwork shoot.

Alex James Taylor: Talk to us about Grit. What are the themes and ideas behind the EP?
Sabina Hellstrom: The name for the EP came much later. I kept coming back to the definition of grit – passion and perseverance towards something meaningful, the courage to keep going when things fail, the endurance to push through resistance. That felt like what these songs were doing. Grit is about identity, resilience, and refusing conformity, but not in some polished, triumphant way. It’s messy. It’s about what happens when you’re forced to keep rebuilding yourself – when things break, when people try to define you, when you realise becoming yourself is usually uncomfortable in some way. Resisting comfort, resisting performance, resisting the version of yourself people can digest easily. The band gave that tension a body but also vulnerability. I think real grit is ugly sometimes. It’s not cinematic or romantic. It’s stubbornness. It’s choosing to continue despite it all.

AJT: Are there any references you want to highlight?
SH: The first thing I wrote for the EP was the guitar on Swan Song. It’s the repetitive part that almost sounds like a long walk. I grew up learning classical Spanish guitar picking and hating it, so that language is buried quite deep in how I play. At the time I was listening obsessively to Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis, and I think that atmosphere seeped into that song. That was about three years before we started recording. I didn’t even know it was going to be on the record at first. Chaos is based on classical music, like Bach, he’s my favourite composer. Then you’ve got Samuel Beckett, Godard, Titian, El Greco and Giacometti. I look at visuals a lot. Stream of consciousness – most of it was written in rehearsals. Someone would play something, someone else would react. Milo, Billy, Pedro and Seb are all incredible musicians so we just did it like that. I have a really strong belief in simplicity, so if it happens there on the spot and it feels good, it’s right. If an idea for a track needs too much explaining, it probably isn’t strong enough. I think that’s just how we did it.

“My Fender Strat got burned in a house fire so the neck is partially melted, it’s always been like that. I’ll probably take it to my grave.”

AJT: The EP was made in an East London warehouse – how does that environment speak to the band and your origins?
SH: The band would not exist without the warehouse. I started the band when I had the smallest room in that place. I came off from quite a dark road and had the idea. This is where it began, our rehearsals were happening in our living room, borrowing instruments, exchanging music and ideas from morning to late night. We did the record just up the road. Alberto, our producer, lived a five-minute walk away. Alberto just got it, he understood immediately that the point wasn’t to clean anything up. It was to catch it. We’d climb out of our beds, drink coffee and pick up a guitar, probably not even brushing our teeth. We didn’t exactly have normal jobs or sometimes even a job, so we had time. Pretty luxurious now if you ask me. But on the other hand, it leaked when it rained, it was freezing in winter, things would break constantly. It teaches you not to romanticise it. The warehouse doesn’t exist anymore; we got kicked out because it wasn’t deemed safe by the council, but I never felt safer and more at home than during my time there.

AJT: Tell us about the recording process – I love that you used burned-out electric guitar, broken amps, bent cymbals and handmade percussion instruments.
SH: What you have to realise is that we all knew from the start the first recordings weren’t going to be made in this otherworldly studio with perfectly tuned instruments, amps and equipment. What makes this record special to me is we were all twenty-somethings; we all came together, no right way to go. My Fender Strat got burned in a house fire so the neck is partially melted, it’s always been like that. I’ll probably take it to my grave. I’d like to believe it has a sound no other guitar in the world does. We put a bag of rice in some paper we rolled up to make a makeshift rainshaker you can hear in Swan Song. Perfect equipment can be a joy, but I believe it’s the person behind it who makes it sound right. If the tools are shit, it forces you to play more instinctively I guess, particularly if you know your instrument. That’s when it gets good. We did the record live in a warehouse with what was there. I’m really proud of this record, it reflects a time when everyone lived on top of each other.

“I have a really strong belief in simplicity, so if it happens there on the spot and it feels good, it’s right.”

AJT: The cover art is very striking – can you take us through the decision behind that?
SH: Thank you, I wanted it to feel confrontational but intimate. The record has this tension between exposure and control. The artwork had to hold that same contradiction – like eye contact that lasts slightly too long. It happened in the same way the EP was recorded: quickly, instinctively and without overthinking. From the beginning, all I knew was that I wanted it to be a photograph. I had never worked with Zac before, so we both went in blind. In hindsight, I now understand that I was subconsciously embracing the same ethos of the recordings with the imaging. He got it. He understood our conversations and put it into reality – it all happened really fast. We shot it in this empty room in my house no one was living in, and I laid on the floor with a plastic sheet over my face. It felt suffocating and exposed at the same time. Again, reflecting the tracks. When we saw the cover, there was something about that image that felt right immediately. We both said that was the one, and that was the end of it. In the beginning, I hated looking and hearing myself, but you have to get over it – so I did.

“If the tools are shit, it forces you to play more instinctively.”

AJT: You’ve recently played live with the likes of The Horrors, Elias Rønnenfelt and The Cribs, how have these experiences shaped your own live set?
SH: We’re a live band first; that’s how it started and that’s where our presence is felt the most. The studio came after. I held back on releasing anything for years because I wanted to learn. The shows you mention only came about last year. All the recordings on this EP are from our own shows. We took our time. When Faris asked me if we wanted to support them for their album tour, it just made sense – I felt ready. It was our first ever tour. What I got from these shows you mention is the same as every show we play, and that’s complete freedom. We’re back in the studio now and are planning to release more this year. We’re obsessed with blues and trip-hop right now, so that’s going to be real interesting.

Bande à Part’s debut EP, Grit, is out now. Follow the band on Instagram.

Grit credits: Composer, Lyricist, Vocals, Guitar, Percussion: Sabina Hellstrom, Keyboard & Percussion: Billy Rubin, Guitar: Pedro Soler, Guitar “Chaos” track: Fred Bird, Bass: Milo Stapleton-Brister, Drums: Sebastian Bloom, Saxophones: Morgan Wallace, Max Florez, Trumpet: Vincent Curson-Smith, Producer: Alberto De Torres, Producer “Chaos” track: Patrick James-Fitzroy, Additional Producer: Sabina Hellstrom, Second Engineer: Zilcho Hamblin, Mastered by Téo Leduc.