Who are H.LLS? Get to know London’s anonymous alt-R&B trio

It all started with a DM; a rogue album link sent straight to my Instagram. Their name, H.LLS, sat somewhere between a URL and a typo, and their profile had no faces, just three artists with mysterious red-orange squares for heads. Suffice to say, my curiosity was piqued. “What is H.LLS?” I asked. “Music,” came the reply. “Fine,” I thought, somewhat reluctantly. “I’ll listen.” 

I later learned that the H.LLS trio were childhood friends from northwest London, which partly explains why their debut album, TAPE 1, immediately captivated me. In stripped-back OG dubstep production and distorted R&B vocals, packaged with the tense immediacy of an illegal rave, the project spoke a language unique to the capital. It’s a language born out of summers spent at Notting Hill Carnival and winters spent smoking indoors; of halal fried chicken and corner shop samosas; of channel-hopping between MTV and Channel U after school. H.LLS’ were UK culture, in the sense that London is everything but. 

A year later, H.LLS were being shot for our Autumn 2025 issue. Travelling in the car between shoot locations that day, the conversation moved quickly. Discussions ranged from Jim Legxacy to 2hollis, to spontaneously planning a movie sequence to the soundtrack of “Going Up The Country” by 60s psychedelic band Canned Heat. H.LLS might be composed of two vocalists and one producer, but they are all equally creative directors, carefully casting musical collaborators (TAPE 1 included Tay Iwar, Col3trane and Tommy Saint, with yet more to come) and conceiving their anonymous social media presence as an extension of their artistry.

“When we were young, social media was all about discovery, now everyone’s on the same algorithm. When was the last time you discovered something sick, sent it to your friends, and they hadn’t already heard it?” explains one of the group’s singer-songwriters – whom we’ll refer to here as TWO – of H.LLS unorthodox approach to content. “Imagine there’s a Christmas tree, and every present is wrapped in the same red and gold, but one is just in a cardboard box. Which one are you going to open first?” Fellow vocalist THREE chimes in: “It’s about the music first.” 

There’s some irony to be found, then, in the fact that H.LLS choose to cover their faces with that mysterious red box (colour #ea3e23, to be exact) in almost every online appearance, because a box is precisely what they don’t fit in. They’re more of a prism – an artistry of the present refracted through nostalgia for the past, telling, through forward-facing production and songwriting, tales of afters and heartbreak in 2000s London. 

Peering behind the boxes on the day of their Dazed shoot, it felt like a good time to revisit the question we started with a year before – what is H.LLS? This time, their answers were more forthcoming. “H.LLS is a genre,” replied TWO. “For me, it’s an answer to the creative plateau we’re witnessing across multiple industries at the moment,” said their sole producer, ONE. “We need to bring like-minded artists together to drive innovation forward again.” THREE sums up: “Basically, get weird. Let’s bring that back.” Though, I can’t deny it’s also great music.

In the interview below, anonymous electronic alt-R&B trio H.LLS – here referred to as ONE, TWO and THREE – further unpack their inimitable style, from the origins of their name, to their diverse listening habits, to what they think makes London special.

How did you settle on the name H.LLS? 

TWO: Originally, we wanted to do something website-based like HTTP or whatever. Honestly, we make our music on top of a hill, so we called it ‘Hills’, and then we got rid of the ‘I’s’, because ‘I’ implies ego, and we didn’t want that. The name that we landed on looks a bit website-y and anonymous.

It’s interesting how your sound is also sort of anonymous. Even speaking to you guys now, it’s hard to work out who’s doing what on each track.

TWO: [Looking at ONE and pointing at THREE] People had no idea he sang until he came to your house. 

ONE: Some people in my family still think that I’m the one singing.

THREE: We’ve always wanted to bring up a community with us, both established and lowkey artists, and one of our ideas early on was to work with already-established artists and make a completely anonymous tape with them, like no credits. Imagine people being like, ‘This sounds like Bieber?’ That’s a future dream for now.

ONE: At the moment, we’re definitely trying to build a community. That’s another thing I learned from [late producer-rapper] Jevon: taking artists out of their comfort zone and seeing what happens. I find that really fun. 

What’s with the red squares?

TWO: Initially, we wanted our identity to be the colour, because a lot of our favourite anonymous artists also had a colour. The Weeknd was black and white when he was anonymous, Bryson Tiller’s red… We wanted to choose a colour that matched us. Then, one day, we were like we should put these squares on our head, and it was sick.

THREE: It also kind of looks unpolished, like it ruins the picture, but I like that. It makes it awkward, it forces you to really look at what’s going on.

How did you settle on H.LLS’ unique sound?

ONE: When I make a beat, it just really comes out of boredom. Being bored with a lot of different sounds and thinking, ‘How can I make this sound different?’ I just throw a 100 different ideas at the first idea, and then you start taking away what doesn’t work. It’s like making a broth. 

THREE: Eventually, you’re left with this skeleton of bare shit, and then it kind of sounds like H.LLS.

TWO: Literally. I think we’re also blessed to come from a place that is a sonic melting pot of all these different sounds. We were going on 24-hour buses at 14 going to LGC [illegal rave] off a bottle of Smirnoff and like eight spliffs. Walking in with the [substances] balls’d off, it was fucking nerve-wracking, you know?

ONE: With a lot of the music, we’re trying to capture growing up in London. We used to listen to hip-hop and trap, but then also go to the rave and listen to dubstep, and then your parents might throw on some rock or soul or whatever. It’s trying to capture those experiences of London. 

TWO: There could be an R&B track, and another that is super dance-y, but the snare drum will be the same on both, because that’s just what ONE has. I feel like we all learned together because we created an environment where we gave each other confidence. If ONE or THREE went into a session now, low-key I think it would all sound a bit H.LLS-y. Like, I came from straight guitar, no drums, but now, every time I make a track there is always a fucking drop in it [laughs]. 

London is pirate radio personified. It’s gritty, it’s DIY, it’s who can be the loudest and the best.

– H.LLS

What makes London so unique, then? 

TWO: Like, look at the food here, bro. You can walk down the street and you see Turkish, Asian, Indian, Georgian – all these different types of food. It’s pan-everything, and our music is pan-genre. I’m not even Jamaican, but I know bare Jamaican songs, you know?

ONE: What’s really cool about London is you can go to one of the richest neighbourhoods in the world, and then walk five or 10 minutes, and then you’re in one of the craziest neighbourhoods. Our friendship group was mad diverse – social classes, financial classes, ethnicities, all these different things. In the US it’s all clean and polished, but London is like organised chaos.

TWO: Look at how grime started. London is literally pirate radio personified. Everyone’s finding a way to make noise that gets people’s attention. It’s gritty, it’s DIY, it’s who can be the loudest and the best.

Speaking of your diverse listening habits, then, what was the last artist you all listened to? 

ONE: You know what? I’ve been listening to a lot of 2hollis, The Kinks and Canned Heat. 

TWO: I’ve been banging Khruangbin and JB. Also, I recently revisited the Michael Jackson Invincible album. From a production perspective, it’s insane. I understand why MJ didn’t like it, but it’s the blueprint for all R&B now. 

THREE: Massive Attack. I’ve realised how much they’ve actually influenced me. 100 per cent.

H.LLS’ next single releases October 24