Growth Spurt

It all happened so fast for Asta Binnie. One day the unassuming teen was just another aspiring musician and the next she'd won Unearthed and all the prestige and notoriety that comes with it. The now-19-year-old overachiever has since played some high-profile support slots with Birds Of Tokyo and Hungry Kids Of Hungary among others, released a trinity of singles and was shortlisted for the Vanda & Young Songwriting Competition – and now she's about to embark on her debut headline tour. Despite the accolades and meteoric rise, the rock star life isn't always all it's cracked up to be. “I'll be broke at the end of this tour!” Asta laughs. “I'm spending all my money on this tour! So after that, I'll be on the streets and begging for food. But it'll all be worth it.”

A lot of the money, admittedly, has gone towards costumes for the tour – “I'm pretty drawn to mega-'80s clothing … and anything gold or silver,” she admits – but one would have to assume the rising costs of life on the road would also be attributable to the recent acquisition of a live band to back her visually colourful performances. Not that Asta's complaining. “It's really good. Before, I was playing with a DJ, which really wasn't me. I was always itching to have a band, so I'm loving it. It's been such an amazing change. The sound is a lot bigger. It's less electronic; it has more of that natural rawness now. It's more rocky! … And what I hope is for people to come out of a show and just be like, 'Yeah, that was really solid. That was really rockin', that was tight.'”

Fans of Asta's more minimalistic style needn't despair, however – she pays special attention to where she comes from, musically. “A few of my tracks will be quite stripped back – that was, you know, where I started. It used to just be me and my guitar, so I do love to do one or two songs just playing on my guitar.”

Although the money situation is likely to be a bit tight for the foreseeable future, Asta nonetheless hopes to fit in some studio time post-tour, with an eye to having an album out “by the end of this year, or early next”. But first, she faces a classic “giant leap” scenario as she makes the jump to bona fide headliner, and she seems genuinely excited about the prospect. “I am just really, really looking forward to bonding with my newly acquired band members, and also playing to rooms full of my own fans. I haven't been able to do that – I may have done it a few times, but I think it's really special to be able to play your own shows, your own headline shows that people have bought tickets to see. The energy is definitely different, so I'm really looking forward to it.”