HEALER is an outstanding alternative indie rock band who’ve become one of my favorite British music acts over the past couple of years. Based in the historic fishing port of Grimsby, on the central eastern coast of England, the band is currently made up of Steve Dean Smith (lead vocals), Dave Harries (guitar), Jazz White (drums) and newcomer Joel Hewitt, who created the single artwork and filmed the video, on guitar. (For the recording of their latest music, Tony Edmondson played bass, however recently departed the band.) Their powerful songs explore themes of love, loss, and hope, wrapped in infectious melodies and beautiful arrangements, and delivered with masterful instrumentation and Steve’s wonderful distinctive vocals that make HEALER’s songs immediately identifiable. 

Since forming in 2022, the talented and charismatic five-piece have built a strong following in the British music scene on the strength of their exceptional music and riveting live performances, as well as garnering recognition and airplay on BBC Music Introducing and Amazing Radio UK/USA. Since the release of their debut single “Hurricane” in December 2022, the busy guys have followed with eight more singles and two remixes. I’ve previously reviewed three of their singles – “Bones“, “Wake Me Up” and “War” – with “Bones” and “War” each spending many weeks on my top 30 chart and “Bones” ranking #67 on my 100 Best Songs of 2023 list and “War” ranking #84 on my 100 Best Songs of 2024. (You can read some of those reviews by clicking on the ‘Related’ links at the end of this post.)

Now they’re back with their ninth and latest single “London Town“, a gorgeous rock song that continues their unbroken string of stellar releases. The track was recorded and mixed by Pieter Rietkerk at Chapel Studios and mastered by Grant Berry of Fader Mastering. About the song, the band says it “explores the burnout of big-city life and the identity crisis that follows — when chasing your dreams starts to feel like losing yourself. It’s spacious, urgent, and speaks to the modern struggle of finding meaning in chaos. In the song, we personify London as a magnetic, almost haunting character — reflecting what it feels like to be on the outside looking in, and losing yourself in the city that was supposed to save you.”

To gain a bit more insight into HEALER’s new song and the Grimsby music scene, I had a brief interview with the band’s drummer Jazz:

EML: I’ve been following you guys for two years now, and first wrote about you when I featured your powerful song “Bones” on my blog in late May 2023. At that time, you’d been together as HEALER for about a year. In your bio on your website, you begin with the following line to describe your hometown: “Rising from the ashes of a once thriving but now forgotten fishing town, HEALER are...”, which I find both brutally honest and endearing. Is there much of a music scene in Grimsby? And what brought the five of you together to form a band in the first place?

Jazz: There is currently a great music scene in Grimsby. Historically, Grimsby (and Cleethorpes) has always had an amazing music scene, filled with bands that have done great things and have been on the edge of making it big. The scene seemed to die down a bit a few years ago, particularly throughout the dreaded Covid years, but that also seemed to be a bit of a catalyst to inspire a lot of the bands that had previously broken up to reunite or create new bands. Which is what brought us together. We all knew each other through either being in previous bands together or being in bands that did gigs together and we all just wanted to start making and playing music again, which is what we did. Now the scene is thriving, with an abundance of bands doing great things, even young bands getting signed, venues like Docks Academy and Yardbirds providing platforms for local artists to perform and support bigger bands and the best thing of all, is all of the local bands know each other and are supporting each other.

EML: Are any or all of you still living in Grimsby?

Jazz: We all still live in Grimsby. I think we would find it hard not to all live in the same area. We meet up regularly to rehearse, make band plans and just generally socialise together so it would be really difficult if we didn’t all live near each other.

EML: In addition to sounding great, your songs also feature intelligent, relatable and often poignant lyrics. How do ideas for new songs come about, and do all band members contribute to writing the music and lyrics, or does that job generally fall on one or two of you? 

Jazz: There isn’t really a clear process for how we write our songs. Steve generally writes most of the lyrics but we all contribute musically to each song. Sometimes Steve might come to a practise session with a new idea or maybe an old idea that he wants to rework, sometimes Dave might come to practise with a new riff that we all build on or sometimes we just randomly start jamming and come up with something brand new together. Sometimes these songs feel like they ‘fall from the sky’ and, sometimes, those are the best songs.

EML: You write that your new song “London Town” “explores the burnout of big-city life and the identity crisis that follows — when chasing your dreams starts to feel like losing yourself.” Is the song autobiographical, and have one or more of you spent any time living in London? Or do the lyrics speak more to the challenges and conflicting emotions that sometimes result when an artist or band puts so much of their time and energy into “making it big”?

Jazz: ‘London Town’ is definitely autobiographical and is about the time that Steve spent living in London and some of the lyrics are directly about Steve’s experiences whilst living there. The song does also link to the challenges of being an artist from a small town and trying to make it and the frustrations of a lot of opportunities being more readily available for artists from ‘bigger cities’.

EML: You’ve released eight singles and two remixes since late 2022, with “London Town” marking your ninth original single. Are there any plans for a full album on the horizon?

Jazz: We recorded a batch of new songs in the studio recently which we will be releasing over the new few months, starting with ‘London Town’ but we have also been writing more new material, which we hope to get back into the studio later in the year to record. We’re not sure whether we will be releasing an album yet but we will definitely be releasing more new material, regularly over this year.

EML: If you could perform with another artist or band in a billing of your dreams, who would that be?

Jazz: That’s such a tough question, there are so many bands we would love to play with, especially because, although we’ve all got similar music tastes, we also all have our own individual tastes. Overall though, U2 seem to be a band that we all take inspiration from and all for different reasons. Bono is certainly a huge inspiration for Steve as a vocalist and they are one of the biggest bands in the world so we know that it would be a huge, packed out stadium show with high quality production throughout. 

“London Town” opens with a plucky guitar riff, then quickly builds into an anthemic rock banger. That smoldering riff continues throughout the song as more of Dave and Joel’s formidable guitar work enter the mix, fortified by Tony’s driving bassline and Jazz’s emphatic drumbeats. It all creates a powerful dynamic backdrop for Steve’s emotionally-charged vocals as he plaintively laments about the strong, unforgiving psychological hold London had on him and so many other musicians: “Can the city hear me singing in my town? Will London listen, does it even hear my sound? Am I loud enough, loud enough for you? We don’t have the same view. You’ve got England ’round your finger. Every song, every singer wants to call you home, while we’re just left alone. Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me London Town!” I love it, and it’s now one of my favorite HEALER songs.

The video, shot at the Grimsby Bus Depot, was filmed and edited by Joel Hewitt and features the band members as passengers on a bus.

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