abracadabra: 'the hand that feeds'

The Sunday Music Drop is a weekly radio series hosted by the KQED weekend news team. In each segment, we feature a song from a local musician or band with an upcoming show and hear about what inspires their music.

Hannah Skelton of Oakland band abracadabra describes their music as “kind of a fun dance party, kind of left-field pop music with an ’80s influence, with some dub sprinkled throughout.”

Skelton and Chris Niles make up the duo, and do all the writing together in what they describe as a very collaborative songwriting process, with Skelton on vocals and synthesizer, Niles on bass. She says their writing and creative process is “a two-headed-monster kind of style where we’ll sit down with one little bit of inspiration and then we’ll pass it back-and-forth and maybe Chris will lay something down and then I’ll build on that with the next layer.”

Skelton and Niles first met after performing together in a Halloween cover band, with a common friend and current co-producer, Jason, in 2016. They played a series of shows together, and quickly realized they had similar tastes and a good collaboration dynamic.

They were also both fans of Nine Inch Nails. “The Hand That Feeds” is a Trent Reznor song — and it’s a song, Skelton says, that instantly struck a chord with her.

“A few days after Roe v. Wade got overturned, we played a show, and I just remember feeling like there wasn’t a song in our set that fully encompassed the feeling that I had. And it was shortly after that we decided to cover ‘The Hand That Feeds.’ The content, or at least my interpretation of Trent Reznor’s message, felt so right,” Skelton recalls.

abracadabra also made their own music video for the song, experimenting with a camcorder and a fisheye lens as they filmed near their house in Jingle Town while making the most of Niles’ video editing skills.

Skelton says that although the original song by Reznor was a very different style to their aesthetic — very “driving and rock” — she says they had the idea to bring the song into a more “spacious kind of dubby world,” taking on the challenge of making it their own and putting their distinctive voice and interpretation to it. After seeing all-woman band Annika, Skelton says she felt further inspired and empowered, and that she hopes to impart that feeling of power to other people via this song.

“The most inspiring thing that’s happening right now is watching people join together and unite and, you know … they’re biting the hand that feeds.”

abracadabra will be performing live at Thee Parkside at 1600 17th Street in San Francisco, Nov. 8.