Winded is a shoegaze-indie band from Miami. What originally started as lead singer and guitarist Thrin Vianale’s solo project during their time at Florida State University in Tallahassee has turned into a full band with a new project on the way.
Raised in Boca Raton, Vianale grew up with their parents playing artists like Madonna and Sade around the house. Their grandfather would bring his guitar and ukulele when he would visit, and that helped push Vianale to start playing the guitar.
It started in middle school when they wanted to play in their friend’s Killswitch Engage cover band, but they just couldn’t learn the songs.
“I definitely didn't have, like, a natural talent for playing instruments; it wasn't something that I picked up easily,” they said. “Growing up, there wasn't a ton to do or, like, a ton of spaces for kids to go that I knew of at that time, so I just sat in my room and played guitar for a long time, for many years.”
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From Boca, Vianale started Winded at FSU with just a guitar and a looper pedal. Their friends in the band Man Moth encouraged Vianale to start playing with them as their full band. In 2018, they all moved to Brooklyn, and Vianale moved back down to South Florida at the end of 2021.
Vianale always wanted to push and see where the full band would go, but it feels more intentional for them now than before.
“ I feel like in this new lineup since I left New York, it's like we're really crafting a different kind of sound,” they said.
The band's current lineup includes Nick Cody on guitar, James Sturges on bass, and Gunther Schenk on drums. Their influence on Winded’s new direction can be heard on the singles “Wish on the Mezzanine” and “Mercy 27”. These songs are louder and faster-paced compared to the band’s earlier work.
Their latest single, “Double Memoir,” explores that realm further, with Vianale providing some harsh vocals that run counter to their usual ethereal, melodic vocals.
“ I just sat in the background and I just like yelled for two seconds and I was like, 'I'm never doing that again,’” they said. “But the new songs definitely explore more of those like highs and lows, but I feel like the ones that are like fast-paced are leaning more towards that like kind of, dare I say, post-hardcoreish kind of vein.”
The main topic that permeates Winded’s older work and the upcoming album is grief. “Schwartz Goes To Heaven,” the band’s 2018 debut album, was made during a period of grieving. Vianale lost a close friend right a few months before they started the recording process.
Working on “Schwartz Goes To Heaven” helped them immensely. Carving time to show up, track and record gave Vianale an outlet at a time when they did not have the language to articulate what they were feeling.
“ I don't even know if I would call grief like an emotion; it's an experience, like this amorphous blob that changes from sadness to anger to confusion to apathy,” they said. “It's so many different things that I don't think that I knew even how to say that out loud, so I'm like, 'Let's just play the songs.’”
Vianale recently became a licensed clinical social worker. An LCSW holds a master’s degree in social work and helps those dealing with mental, behavioral, and other emotional issues. Their experience working and studying in the field gave them the ability to converse about grief on Winded’s upcoming album.
It explores grief’s high peaks and low valleys. Not just grief from losing a loved one, but also symbolic loss, like losing a part of yourself or something you used to enjoy.
“ The most accurate way to describe it is the confusion that arises about who you are, like, your true nature when you're raised in a toxic environment,” Vianale said about the band’s latest single, “Double Memoir”. “You're raised in an environment where there's a lot of frequent and intense and unpredictable displays of anger or a lack of safety, where it kind of can be challenging to understand ‘how do I extract myself from that?’”
Vianale hopes listeners understand that it's okay not to show up perfectly in life when you're going through difficult times.
“ I hope that it reminds people that you don't have to show up perfectly, but you just have to show up for yourself first when you're really going through it,” they said.
The album’s release date has yet to be announced.
