Hunter As a Horse (HAAH) is the South African musician and vocalist Mia van Wyk. Based in the Western Cape, she spent a decade self-releasing a diverse series of EPs and singles combining electronic dark-pop music with intense, thoughtful lyrics. This resulted in numerous memorable songs with an often cinematic production.
HAAH signed to Metropolis Records in early 2026 and has released a long-awaited debut album entitled ‘Paradise Lost’ today (24th July). It includes five recent singles – ‘Lighthouse’, ‘Here’s To All The Ones’, ‘Paradise Lost’, ‘Obey’, ‘Leviathan’ – plus a further seven songs that alternate between rhythmically pulsating, such as the club-ready ‘Dark Sky’, or downtempo and atmospheric. Songs such as ‘Masochist’ and the haunting ‘Object’ are superb examples of the latter approach.
van Wyk states that “this album deals with my shadow, my transformation and my inner architecture. I have tried to show what is deep inside myself. I discovered that the things I was taught to bury were never my enemies, but are actually my power.”
A video for the album’s title song has been made available to coincide with the release of the full record. It can be seen HERE.
Previous HAAH releases consisted of songs that tended to be independent of each other, but van Wyk’s mindset started to shift with the 2025 EP ‘Anathema’, which intentionally had a common thread running through it. “It was the first time I really started thinking in terms of a connected body of work, so it felt natural to take that further with ‘Paradise Lost’, she explains. “It is designed to be heard as one piece, even though the songs are quite different individually.”
Elaborating further, she adds: “A lot changed for me during that time personally and I went through a kind of integration process where I started confronting things more. Writing the album felt like a natural expression of that. In the past, I often struggled to bring songs together because they felt too different, but this time everything came from a similar emotional place and period in my life.”
With her inspiration often stemming from unusual sources, van Wyk reveals that “I have always been drawn to the villains in stories, the ones who were feared and misunderstood, and I have often found beauty in places other people are afraid to look – the strange, the haunted, the macabre. Some people see monsters. I see stories. I see what survived. I see how it transformed. This album is resurrection, obsession, desire, revenge, surrender, love and my shadow. I don’t believe darkness is always something to be destroyed. Sometimes it’s the only part of you strong enough to save you. This album isn’t about conventional ‘healing’. It’s about walking out of the ruins wearing the crown.”
Seamlessly genre-hopping between alternative, indie, electronic and dream-pop, with diversions into alternative dance and even nu-goth, the songs of HAAH have been described as mysterious, apocalyptic soundtracks for the strange happenings of our time, with the UK newspaper The Guardian commenting: “Brings to mind the mesmerising atmospherics of Lamb and Zero 7. Dark and very lovely indeed.”
The subject matter of Mia van Wyk’s lyrics are a mystical ride through her strange and synchronicitous life. Deeply authentic, they are inspired by death, addiction, astral visions, CPTSD, melancholia, nostalgia and magical thinking.
Songs by HAAH can be heard in US TV shows such as American Horror Story, Riverdale and Elite, the film ‘Wander Darkly’ and an array of international adverts.