Hooked Like Helen’s Tragedy of Physics EP is up for 5 Josie Music Awards (to be announced September 2020). "Liar" received an Honorable Mention in this year’s prestigious International Songwriting Competition in two categories, and was recently named a finalist in the Unsigned Only Songwriting Competition, whose panel of judges - including Charli XCX, Robert Smith and Grouplove - will determine winners in early fall.
Track 2 from Hooked Like Helen's Tragedy Of Physics EP, "No Turning Back" premiered on CLASH Magazine who praised it as “a soaring, vastly uplifting piece of bouncy, addictive alt-pop”. The song was then used in the official movie trailer for High Strung: Free Dance, making it the 5th song in total that Nikki and Jon contributed to the film. The band’s single "Tear This Place Apart" premiered on the highly influential UK-based The Line Of Best Fit and received rave reviews from the publication.
Hooked Like Helen has entered 2020 with a fresh set of musical placements in the wildly popular Netflix docu-series, CHEER. Nikki custom composed tracks for 9 scenes in 4 of the 6 episodes that aired in January 2020, garnering tweets of approval from Reese Witherspoon, Chrissy Teigen, Amy Schumer, Gabrielle Union, and many more. The band is no stranger to scoring music for docu-series’; previously, Hooked Like Helen tracks "Get Well", "Surface Break", and "Concrete Tub" were placed on MTV’s Unlocking The Truth and were included in the show’s official Spotify playlist. “Surface Break” was also featured in the pivotal final segment of the poignant Davis Guggenheim documentary, The Dream Is Now which chronicles the struggles of the children of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
Hooked Like Helen is now preparing a new EP for release in Fall 2020 and has announced a residency at world-renowned Cedar Point for select dates in August. The duo played a Livestream show from the historic 1500 seat Sandusky State Theatre on May 20th, broadcast to local fans via the Sandusky Register. This Hooked Like Helen show was the last live performance on that stage before the theatre was severely damaged in a storm on June 10th. Fox 8 News Cleveland aired clips from the livestream on June 12th, 2020.
LISTENING LINKS
Hooked Like Helen's sound embodies a unique vein of pop music; Nikki’s haunting, layered harmonies and lush vocal arrangements create a surreal atmosphere of simultaneous melancholy and hope, dissonance and resolve. Dark lyrical themes of existential pondering provide an eerie contrast to HLH’s sonic sensibilities in a timeless, ageless context in which melody reigns supreme. Piano hooks, intricate, rhythmic bass lines, and epic, driving drums carry the songs of Hooked Like Helen through a slightly sad world view, always with a groove and a constant sense of Pop.
ACCOLADES
Winner - 2020 American Tracks Music Awards - Best Score for "Liar" - Month of April
Winner - 2020 American Tracks Music Awards - Best Music Video for "Liar" - Month of April
Finalist - 2019 International Songwriting Competition - Best Adult Contemporary for “Liar” (Honorable Mention)
Finalist - 2019 International Songwriting Competition - Best Music Video for “Liar” (Honorable Mention)
Grand Prize Winner indi.com Award - Best Original Song for “Liar” - Judges’ Pick
JOSIE AWARDS 2020 NOMINEE ANNOUNCEMENT: Duo of the Year, Music Video of the Year, Vocalist of the Year: Pop/Contemporary, EP of the Year, Song of the Year (winners will be announced at the awards show on Sep 5th 2020)
Finalist - 2020 Unsigned Only Music Competition - Adult Contemporary (winners TBA Fall 2020)
Finalist - 2020 Unsigned Only Music Comeptition - Screenshot Category (winners TBA Fall 2020)
PLACEMENTS
CHEER (Docu-series 2020) S01E2, E3, E5, E6
High Strung: Free Dance (2019)
High Strung: Free Dance (Official Trailer - 2019)
High Strung: Free Dance (Soundtrack): “Liar”, “No Turning Back”, “Surface Break”, “Who Do You Think You Are?”
Nashville (T.V. series) Promo: "Stable"
Keeping Up With The Kardashians (T.V. series) S12E14, E16, E17, E18, E19, E21 & S14E16
Bad Girls’ Club (T.V. series) S16E3
MTV’s Unlocking The Truth (Docu-series) S01E1, E5, E8
MTV’s Unlocking The Truth (Soundtrack): “Get Well”, “Surface Break”, “Concrete Tub”
Davis Guggenheim's The Dream Is Now (2017 Documentary): "Surface Break"
SOCIAL MEDIA
Youtube Channel: 207,950 views
Facebook: 4,166 followers
Instagram: 2,887 followers
Twitter: 696 followers
Photo by Michael Mauve
Photo by Michael Mauve
Photo by Michael Mauve
PRESS
RADIO DISNEY
VENTS MAGAZINE
CLASH MAGAZINE
THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Hooked Like Helen
Electronic Press Kit
In a house in the woods about 40 miles west of Cleveland, Hooked Like Helen began as the musical brainstorms of husband-and-wife, Jon and Nikki Stipp. Experimental home recordings quickly developed into an alt-pop vision; within a year of the project's inception, Nikki and Jon had shaped a new sound that reflected their truth and their influences in a seamless blend of organic and electronic production. The band’s 2019 five song EP, Tragedy Of Physics, co-produced by Nikki and long-time friend and collaborator, Grammy-winning Isha Erskine, garnered international attention: The music video for the angsty-beautiful piano ballad "Liar" premiered on Radio Disney platforms and the song was included on the Motion Picture Soundtrack for High Strung: Free Dance. The film - starring Thomas Doherty (Disney’s Descendants 2 and 3), Jane Seymour and Juliet Doherty - was released on Netflix on May 31st, 2020 and prominently features "Liar" in an emotional, groundbreaking dance sequence choreographed by Tyce Diorio (So You Think You Can Dance, Taylor Swift’s ‘ME!’).