A couple of weeks ago, the Motormouth team had sent a batch of questions to our favorite up and coming artist of 2025, the heavenly Bonnie Hook, to learn more about her musical journey, overall influences, and artistic expression.
Just this last Fall, Bonnie Hook had released her long-awaited EP diadem which we featured in our Hot New Picks for our Fall 2025 zine as well as our 2025 year-round-up episode.
We were truly honored to learn more about the inspirations behind her latest EP, what it's like to play live, and her favorite Detroit records.
Read on for our full conversation with Bonnie Hook.
Taken from live from outside ep. 1: bonnie hook
MOTORMOUTH: Tell us about how you got started making music. What initially inspired you?
Bonnie Hook: I think for a long time just being an avid listener and "digger" since I was a kid looking for music after school on the family desktop inspired me. Going down rabbit holes on YouTube finding music that sounded nothing like I’d ever heard was sooo important. I was a choir kid at school and raised in a southern rooted Baptist church so music was always around. I feel like once I got settled back home in Detroit after college and linked up with a bunch of other creatives it really pushed me to turn inward and see what I could do on my own.
You draw on such a wide array of sounds and genres to form your own unique sonic palette. What are some of your biggest musical influences?
The list is never-ending and always changing but at the moment I’d say Elizabeth Cotten, The Beach Boys, Erykah Badu, Joni Mitchell and Boards of Canada. If you put them all in a blender it’d probably be me in a cup.
Elizabeth Cotten
In what ways does being based in Detroit influence and inspire you?
The soundscape of Detroit is sooo vast and alive, every time I blink it seems like someone’s dropping soon or doing a show, all while working their day jobs and making time for each other in the community. It’s all grind here and it’s helped me grow just seeing how much my friends put into their work.
We first caught you playing live for Dick Texas’s debut album release party. Are there any states or feelings you’re trying to evoke? Any consistent themes that run through your live sets versus recording, production, and/or DJing?
I try to incorporate some sense of improvisation live, and try to be less rigid and nitpicky (as a virgo this is basically just exposure therapy) in the studio or my go-to producer and friend Eriks place i turn into a madman. Live is where i can be silly and take myself a little less serious, and really see how far i can push sounds into a feeling without just a backing track. I love ambient music so im often using my Line 6 dl4 to make ambient noise or accompaniment between songs or changing it up rhythmically. Basically whatever i can do to make sure any show frequenters arent getting the same set over and over haha.
Dick Texas LP Release Show featuring support from Bonnie Hook
You’re known as a chef in the studio and in the kitchen. Do you see any parallels between the way you create a song and the way you prepare a dish?
OMG I feel like work service is such a high cortisol fast paced environment I think the state I’m in cooking most of the time is completely different from the state I’m in when I’m workshopping a song. Fundamentally it’s the same process though, making sense of the bits and pieces you’ve got access to and making something new.
The Kitchen by Cooking with Que
We named diadem our favorite release of 2025. Can you give us some insight into the process of writing that record? Are there any stories behind the songs or themes running throughout the EP you were trying to communicate?
Thank you guys so much!!! The process for it was pretty crazy to experience for the first time, I really wanted to see how much I could do on my own. For a while I’d only collab or produce for friends because I thought I wasn’t good enough and had crazy imposter syndrome hahaha. After doing shows all summer, putting something for the ears I gained along the way felt necessary. I was definitely bullied into putting shit out by my friends. My writing process for it was complete isolation pretty much, a lot of time spent at home in my rocking chair with my guitar playing the same chords over and over like a ghoul, until I filled them with words. I'm pretty stubborn creatively so I was really fixated on the extent I could push myself to express myself in this new way, with as little outside influence as possible. From there I had these songs and really just sought to bring order to it i guess ???? (this may be gibberish but if u get it u get it) and in learning them, mixing and mastering them it was like looking in a mirror for the first time. The project ended up being brain gunk from the journey I'd had the past few years, and the emotions i had or hadnt acknowledged; things like grief (satellite) stagnancy (a momentary lapse of judgement) atonement (float) companionship (dare to do) and crippling existential responsibility of being 25 IMO (ants meander)
As a radio show that exclusively plays music from Detroit, we love to know what local music Detroiters love. What would you say are three of your absolute favorite Detroit albums/records?
Moodymans "Forevernevermore" Majesty Crushs "Love 15" and Cryingfossil + Infants "1,000,000" shoutout Jacob and Patrick :)
And do you have anything coming up you’re excited about? Anything that you’d like to plug?
I can gladly say an album is in the works, and the ball is rolling, aiming for next spring/summer to start rollout. Heavily inspired by David Lynch, and higher fidelity than the ep bahahah if i start posting ominous things thats probably why.
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