Tulpa
Josie Kirk and Dan Hyndman
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For our October 2025 Newsletter, we were pleased to interview Josie and Dan from Leeds-based noise-pop band Tulpa. Their debut album is out on 28 November 2025 on Skep Wax.
Thanks for answering our questions....
Hi Tulpa, your album is called ‘Monster Of the Week’. Are we talking real monsters here, or metaphorical ones?
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Dan: Like a lot of the lyrics it's kind of a phrase that just resonated with me for reasons unknown. I like a nice turn of phrase or idiom. Me and Josie had been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a bit of a guilty pleasure, but it kinda really stands up as well written trash. At a similar time we watched this film 'I saw the TV Glow' which is really cool, I think the phrase or theme re-appeared in that film too! Monster Of The Week, the song, is written from the point of view of someone who feels a bit sorry for themsleves and perceives themselves to be on the receiving end of a of a pitch fork mob. Its ironically 'Morriseyesque'.
Actually, your band name has a similar resonance. A tulpa (as I learned embarrassingly recently) is a supernatural being conjured up by the collective will of a number of people. Is that how we should understand the band?
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Dan: Don't worry about it! I don't think we fully get or endorse the process either. I think it's more of an individual thing of creating a second consciousness within your own mind that then begins to make its own autonomous decisions. Theres a community, it's kind of interesting, it's not something we've tried ourselves, but it sounds kinda dreamy a bit like the band. There are some metal bands with the same name, I guess they leaned into the dark side of the process. I guess the cynics would say it’s like a self-induced madness really. ​
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You are quite a new group, and yet you’ve already found yourselves recording a live session for Marc Riley and Gideon Coe, which is pretty impressive. How did that come about? And how anxious were you when Marc Riley handed the mic over to you and the time had come to perform live on the radio?
Josie: Marc has been a big supporter of all of the other bands Dan, Mike, and Myles have been in over the years. They're all pretty used to radio sessions now, but it was my first time, which was quite daunting. But everyone at the studio was really welcoming and we all just had a good time. Hopefully we get to do another one at some point!
Josie, you seem to have mastered the art of playing bass and singing at the same time. Not many people can do this. I remember watching Julian Cope doing it. He seemed to have created bass lines where it’s all very straightforward and 4/4 while he’s singing, but gets more adventurous when the singing stops. Is this your policy, or do you have two independent brains, one for singing and one for the bass?
Josie: It's taken a while to get used to it! My bass playing and singing experience was pretty limited before joining Tulpa so it's been a bit of a journey. I have no real method - I just love playing the songs and keep playing them until it feels right.
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A question for Dan: the guitar sounds on your album are really fantastic. A lot of the time you and Myles are playing simultaneously – but it doesn’t feel like a conventional lead guitar/rhythm guitar set-up. How do you decide which guitarist does what?
Dan: The guitars are not too effected. There is a particular guitar tuning used frequently on the record that is quite distinct. I use a £30 fake Klon pedal, a Squier strat I got for free and a really nice Selmer amp from the 60's. The combination of shit stuff and good stuff seems to be key. I wanted the distortion to be like a warm comforting hug and keep a lot of clarity.
Me and Myles play the same thing quite a lot which sometimes does a chorusey thing. I don’t know how we decide who does the lead parts, if I have an idea before I do it, if not then it's just whoever wigs out the best and first. If I sing then sometimes Myles will do the solos. We both are quite into similar things tonally and have worked together before.
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Being an old person, I am sometimes reminded of Josef K (although maybe with the treble turned down a bit). Are there other bands whose guitar arrangements you love and admire?
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I don't know Joseph K well, so I can't comment too much on that one. Malkmus is my guy for most things guitar-related, inventive, emotive, sometimes a bit silly - and strength comes from ideas rather than too much technicality. We love loads of things though, I think we see ourselves as an indie guitar band in the pretty classic sense of the term: noisy, melodic but song orientated.
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Despite the raucousness and adventurousness of the guitars, you seem to manage to have written an album of pop songs, with very catchy melodies sung by Josie. Was this a conscious decision? Or did things just turn out that way?
Maybe I touched on this a bit in the last question. I don't think it's a very conscious decision at all though. I would love to do something weirder at some point but this is just what comes out when I pick up a guitar and it's probably a reflection of the albums I've spent the most time listening to since being a teenager, although we do dig some further left field stuff too.
You’re based in Leeds, not a bad city for live music. Which venues do you recommend?
Dan: Brude is good. Hyde Park Book Club. Wharf Chambers.
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Finally: if Tulpa were to play an all-dayer and you could have any other bands on the bill, let’s say six of them, who would you choose?
Dan: I don’t know how realistic you want me to be. I'll assume if they are dead they are unavailable so will try do a combination of achievable and less achievable currently touring bands:
Pavement
Patti Smith
MBV
Stereolab
Holiday ghosts
Pozi
Tulpa
That would be one hell of an all-dayer. Thanks very much Josie and Dan.