Laguna – You Speak More Than You Listen
Today, Dutch alt-pop artist Laguna releases her new EP You Speak More Than You Listen: a dreamy yet defiant record about making yourself heard, claiming space and holding on to softness in a world that often rewards those who speak the loudest.
Laguna is the solo project of Dutch musician and songwriter Bente Hout. Before starting Laguna, Hout spent five years fronting dream-pop band Sväva, playing festivals including Eurosonic Noorderslag, Oerol and The Great Escape, touring the UK and Sweden, and supporting acts such as Still Corners and Vök. Sväva’s music also reached an international audience through a sync in Netflix series 13 Reasons Why.
With Laguna, Hout has developed a more personal sound, blending atmospheric synths, layered vocals and electronic alt-pop with intimate songwriting. On You Speak More Than You Listen, that world becomes more outward-looking and explicitly feminist.
The EP was recorded in Brighton and London, with producer Michelle Hindriks (CIEL), Hout’s former bandmate in Sväva, who emigrated to the UK to pursue her music career. Like its predecessor Drifting, You Speak More Than You Listen was created with an entirely female and non-binary artistic team: a conscious approach that reflects the ideas behind the music itself.
Where Drifting was predominantly personal and introspective, the new EP connects personal experiences to wider questions of power, equality and whose voices get heard. Throughout the record, Laguna explores what it means to speak up for yourself and others without abandoning vulnerability, empathy or nuance.
That idea is most direct on ‘Silent’, the song that gave the EP its title. Wrapped in dreamy synths, vocal harmonies and an infectious pop chorus, the track pushes back against men who dominate conversations and expect women to make themselves smaller: ‘You speak more than you listen, but I will not be silent only ‘cause it suits you.’
For Laguna, however, resistance does not necessarily have to be loud: “I believe in the power of softness. You can be gentle and still be very clear about what you stand for.”
That tension between softness and resistance runs throughout You Speak More Than You Listen: refusing to accept who gets to speak and who is expected to listen, without adopting the same aggression the record pushes back against.
Elsewhere, Laguna broadens that perspective. Electronic pop track ‘Once It’s Dark’ takes aim at people in positions of political and social power who make far-reaching decisions while remaining insulated from their consequences. Rather than turning these themes into slogans, Laguna approaches them through atmosphere, irony and personal storytelling.
The result is a record that can feel intimate and confrontational at the same time: dreamy on the surface, but asking uncomfortable questions underneath.
You Speak More Than You Listen is Laguna’s third solo EP and her clearest artistic statement yet, a record about taking up space without having to become harder, louder or less vulnerable in order to do so.
#lllllllllllaguna