Haim released their fourth studio album I Quit in June of 2025, but are not anywhere close to quitting. The band is out on tour and making a stop in the Twin Cities at Armory on Sunday, Sept. 14. Mac Wilson spoke with the sister trio about their excitement to tour post-COVID, their creative process, and what they did quit.

Use the audio player above to listen to the interview, and find a full transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Mac Wilson: Hello. This is Mac Wilson from The Current. It's my privilege to welcome the members of Haim for our conversation right now. Alana, Danielle, Este, thanks for checking in today.

Este Haim: Thanks for having us.

Alana Haim: Thank you for having us.

Mac Wilson: So, here with Haim, playing at The Armory in September, and the new record I Quit is out now. So the first thing that I wanted to ask about: I want you to think about as you started off as a band in 2013, when you put out the debut, as opposed to putting out the record during COVID in 2020 and the new cycle now, there's similarities and differences in the way that you've had to sit down and chat with records, I'm guessing. When Women in Music Pt. III came out, every bit of press conversation was probably on Zoom, similar to the way that we're doing it now. Now that you're able to do it in a little bit of a hybrid fashion and have actual conversations and online, what has the experience been talking about the new album, just the basic talking about it, as opposed to how it was five or 10 years ago?

Este Haim: I hate talking about COVID because it feels super weird to talk about that time. But when we put out Women in Music Pt. III, we announced it right at the start of COVID. And I think the biggest heartbreak was, we were gonna put out an album and we couldn't tour it immediately. That was our biggest heartbreak, because we also didn't know if live music was ever going to come back, and for a band that prides ourselves as being a live band, because we love playing live more than anything on this planet. It is where we find our most joy making music, is being on the road and playing live. To put out an album, and then basically we had to wait two years to perform it when we were on the “One More HAIM Tour,” it was like the biggest gift that we had ever been given, because we finally got to play live again. And so with this album, I think the thing that's mind blowing is we put out the album on June 20, and now we're going on tour in the fall, and it feels so quick, if anything, it feels like, “oh my gosh, it's happening, we're doing this,” and I think we're just the most excited that we get to play the songs on this album live, because when we were making it, we were already scheming about what our show was going to look like, how we were going to change up songs and play the songs a certain way. And I think now we're just really excited to actually do it.

Mac Wilson: So I get that this is probably a basic comparison, given the myriad connections that you have with the folks in Vampire Weekend and have been in Vampire Weekend, but that's sort of the model that I have in mind, predicting what your sets are going to be like. When Vampire Weekend did two nights at The Armory last summer, they largely changed it up on a nightly basis. You'd go and you'd hear a batch of songs. One night, they'd repeat a couple of them, but you'd get an entirely different batch the second night. Do you have plans to shake it up quite at that degree when you're putting together the set lists looking ahead to the fall?

Alana Haim: Yeah, we're always thinking about how to switch things up, because it's fun for us too. I think it's fun for everybody involved. But yeah, we're starting tour rehearsals in a couple of days, and that's when the real ooey gooey fun happens. And I'm very excited about that.

Mac Wilson: And looking back to the Vampire Weekend concerts last summer, Danielle, I just want to say that high on my list was "Hold You Now," the collaboration that you did on Father of the Bride. So I went to night one, and they didn't play it. And I texted my friends at night two, and I'm like, "Did they open with ‘Hold You Now’?” And he goes, yep. I'm like, “Oh, man, I missed it, but it'll happen again.”

Danielle Haim: I'm sorry.

Mac Wilson: It's all good, but I love the way that there's that element of mystery that goes into any given set. And we're looking forward to seeing what you bring out at The Armory this fall. So you mentioned that you hate talking about COVID, which is completely understandable, but I want to come up to the present — any hobbies that you adopted over the last few years that you have actually stuck with, or is there stuff that you got into during those years that you've largely given up? What are some expected or unexpected things that have either stuck or gone away from your life, in that regard?

Este Haim: We quit a lot of stuff.

Alana Haim: Yes, I really tried to do the whole bread-making thing. And I was like, “You know what? I'm gonna make bread as much as possible.”  I was not good at it during those times in lockdown, and I'm still not good at it. I've given up on cooking. I just can't. I can't do it. It's not  in my blood. I can't cook.

Danielle Haim: I cook for you, but I still I'm not a baker. I'm not a baker, but I do like to cook.

Alana Haim: This is Alana speaking. I can follow a recipe to a T, and whatever happens at the end is not what it's supposed to be. So, I caution anyone who comes over, if I make them dinner, I apologize a million times before it happens.

Mac Wilson: So, as you did say a few minutes ago that you quit a lot of things over the last couple of years, which in turn gives sort of the name to the new record I Quit. And it's tempting to label it as a breakup album, but you've gone on record basically saying that, yes, this is a record about breakups and moving on from one thing to the next. One thing that I was thinking about when talking about any given breakup album is the temptation to whether you want to get super hyper personal with the details, or whether you want to make things as universal as possible. What's the balance that all of you as members have tried to find between the super personal and the super universal in writing about something like a breakup that everybody goes through?

Danielle Haim: I think we give as much detail so that the person we're writing it about knows that we're writing it about them. They just get to know enough, there's one single detail, usually, that really can give it away. And then I think after that, that's all we really need. I mean, all our songs come directly from our experience, or when a friend is talking to us about their experience, and I think that we're constantly looking for inspiration to write music, and you kind of have to be a sponge that never really shuts off. I think that our ears are always open, for better, for worse, we're kind of open to any and everything that happens to us. I think you kind of have to be, as a songwriter.

Mac Wilson: You were talking about, sort of being open to letting the ideas come in. There's a quote that I remember reading from John Prine years ago after his divorce, where he said that “the truck of songs backed up to his house and dumped a whole bunch.” Was that the experience? Did you have a whole bunch more ideas after going through particular breakups, or was the writing process essentially what you've done before?

Alana Haim: There were a million songs.

Este Haim: There was a lot, yeah, there was a lot of ideas floating around. I will say we did write a lot of the album, kind of in this moment where the three of us found ourselves to all be single for the first time in a long time. There's a lot of songs on there about heartbreak, but there's also a lot of songs about kind of finding your independence as a single person, and being single and going out in the town, and we did that a lot, and that was actually so fun. There's also some songs on the album that are very nostalgic, I think because we were basically going out for the first time, just the three of us in a long time, and it felt kind of like high school again. We didn't necessarily all live together, but we were just going out all the time, just the three of us. And it really felt so fun to just hit the town and get drunk with your sisters and it was just a really, really fun time. I feel like a lot of the album speaks to that, and it was kind of this well of inspiration.

Mac Wilson: We're chatting with the band Haim about their new record I Quit, and one of the folks that you worked with on the new record, Dave Fridmann, mixed most of the songs. And Dave Fridmann, for those who don't know, has a very, very distinct sound with the way that he makes things sound. I'm curious, as you were putting your album together, did you engineer it to be listened to in any particular context? I'm thinking, these days when you make a record, it has to be designed to be listened to on your phone. It has to be designed to be listened through headphones and listened to in your car and listened to all of these things at once. So where did you even start with, well, the ideal way to listen to this?

Danielle Haim: So, I mean, the first thing I'll say is that we are just huge Dave Fridmann fans. I think we have been for forever since we've heard his stuff with Flaming Lips and MGMT, and there's just so many, he's such a genius. So, I mean, I think the main thing, we're from Los Angeles, we spend a lot of time in our cars. I think the main thing we always do after we get a mix is immediately go to our cars, just because that's also how I love to listen to music, just driving around. But yeah, the mixing process is a very interesting process, and we just felt so amazing getting to be able to work with Dave. I also say, I play drums on all of the Haim songs, and I think drums for us are kind of the most important, just sonically. And also, Dave is a genius at making drums sound perfect. So, if the drums are right, we're on the right track.

Mac Wilson: When I'm chatting with musicians, sometimes I like to bring up something that you probably don't get asked a lot about. So, my teenage daughter and I, we were reading about you as a band, and she goes, "They did a song for the second The Croods movie?" And I'm like, that's great! Could you tell us a little bit about what it was like to work on a song for The Croods: A New Age?

Este Haim: Oh so fun, because that was with Mark Mothersbaugh.

Mac Wilson: Oh, super cool.

Este Haim: So that was also bucket list. That was actually right in the middle of COVID, so they kind of needed help on the song. And Devo, to us, it doesn't get better. And we've been so inspired by Devo for forever. Also, it's just so fun to write something for an animated movie. I think we just want to serve the movie. I feel like all of our kind of Haim, not rules, but sensibilities, just kind of go out the window. We're just like, "whatever, we'll serve the song." And they really wanted rock, almost like a hair metal thing. And we were just like, great. We've never really done this before, but we're gonna do it if we get to work with Mark and it was such a joy.

Mac Wilson: So I have a question for Alana, and I understand that you might be under a non-disclosure agreement, but this is for me, I want to know what you think about this: [his upcoming film] One Battle After Another is coming to Fortnite.

Alana Haim: It is. I just heard this today.

Mac Wilson: So is this something that you had any involvement in? Like, did they have to scan your face to go into it? Are you not going to be part of the Fortnite?

Alana Haim: I have no idea. I have to make some calls. I mean, I actually do play Fortnite, so I'm just excited to see what that collaboration looks like. But no non-disclosure agreement here. I genuinely just found out, like everybody else.

Mac Wilson: That's the, I believe, the second film that you've made with your longtime friend and collaborator of the band, Paul Thomas Anderson, one of my favorites. In fact, the first time we were we were supposed to chat a couple of weeks back, it was right when The New York Times did their list of the best movies of the 2000s so far? And I think he had like the second-most movies on the list, which is not a surprise.

Alana Haim: I know and honestly, it is insane that all three of us are part of his legacy. I think working with Paul Thomas Anderson has taught us so much. I mean, he's honestly helping us with our tour, because he's such an amazing person to just bounce ideas off of, and he has so many incredible references. He's helped us on the last tour as well. And he's just, I mean, his music taste is unmatched. I think that if he wasn't an incredible, amazing director, he would probably be the greatest musician of all time. I don't think he plays an instrument very well now, but he would have been, because just his music taste. There's no one that has a better music taste than he does, but it is insane that we get to call him a friend and get to collaborate with him so much.

Mac Wilson: I'm actually kind of curious now, Alana, whether the inevitable press cycle for that film, whether it will bump up against the Haim tour at all, whether there will be any overlap, is that something you've even allowed yourself to look ahead for?

Alana Haim: I have, I mean you can ask my sisters, I can only work in days. So, today is the day that I'm living in. Anything farther than today, I have no idea what's going on. But I think what I'm most excited about is for everybody to see this next film, because it's amazing, and I'm so happy that I got to be a part of it and go round two with Paul. I just can't wait for people to see it.

Mac Wilson: It is great to be chatting with the sisters of Haim today about the new album and the new tour. It's been a privilege chatting with you, and best of luck for whatever is to come.

Haim: Thank you so much, Mac. We love The Current, you've always supported us, and we love you guys, and thank you so much for having us on.

Este Haim: And we love public radio. So thank you for everything you do.

Mac Wilson: Thank you for your support and best of luck, as we say in the business, break a leg.

Credits

Guests – Danielle Haim, Este Haim, Alana Haim
Host – Mac Wilson
Producers – Derrick Stevens
Digital Producer – Natalia Toledo

External Links

Haim Official Website - https://www.haimofficial.com/