Introducing Villette and her beguiling new single, If You Go

Villette is a one woman band outta New Zealand, part of the Red Bull Sound Select program and local label Valve Sounds. And when we say one woman band we mean writing, singing, rapping and producing, all around her incredibly smooth voice blending R&B, hip hop, soul and electronica to perfection. We were very taken with her latest single, If You Go, so much so we sent a few questions to help us (and you) get to know her a little better.

Tell us about yourself?

Hiiiii I'm Villette! 21, from Auckland NZ. Producer, singer, songwriter and semi-retired DJ. I've been producing and recording my own tracks now for about two years now. Parents met in a band, made musical children, came from a musical household and boom here I am on Pilerats talking about music.

What kinda music are we talking?

Genres suck because I still don't know exactly what type of music I make, but some of the buzz words most people use when describing my music is "Electronic R&B, Soul, Alt". I'm not mad at that though. I would describe my music as moody, play-this-in-the-bedroom, post-breakup, slightly sexy and a lil bit arrogant music.

Production/writing process?

It all depends on how I'm feeling. Most of the time I start with the beat, chords, a melody. The first thing I do is sit in front of my laptop and open Ableton, and then start playing with samples. I'll create the whole track first and then start freestyling over it with different melodies and I pick up words I usually say first. It's really interesting to me, because sometimes I can sing one line that's freestyled and then write the rest of the track based off that one line. If I'm not making music, I'm consuming it or reading about it or reading books and poetry, constantly writing notes on my phone with random lines and ideas that I want to revisit when I'm creating, and this really helps when I sit down to write if I don't freestyle anything I like.

Can you tell us about your new single, If You Go?

I started off with the beat on this track. I made it over a few days. I started playing a whole lot of chords and then picked out my favourite two. It took me a couple days to make without leaving my bedroom haha. Once I had a basic structure to the song I sat down and started writing, and the first line, "This is where you say you want me back", came so naturally that I chose to run with it. At the time I was emotionally quite vulnerable and this song really covers my immediate reaction to that. I recorded the vocals in my bedroom and restructured the song, then sat on it for a while to listen over to it and make minor changes. I ended up really happy with this track!

What’s the rest of the year have in store?

More music! I'm recording and mixing my mixtape this month at Red Bull studios, If You Go is the first song off the tape. Dropping my first visuals this year too which I'm really excited and nervous about!

Where can we hear more of your music?

I'm on SPOTIFY, Youtube, Apple Music and iTunes. :) A lot of my older stuff is on SOUNDCLOUD so I'd suggest starting there if you wanna hear my production working with other people and my earlier vocal stuff.

Follow Villette: FACEBOOK