There’s no denying that Christchurch three-piece Hooster are on a roll. The band seems to have won every radio station competition on offer over the past few years, and have secured a generous helping of NZ On Air grants as a result. But the band – bassist Kris Giles, guitarist and singer Ed Loughnan, and drummer Al Evans – admit there is a secret to their success. “We try to plan for the occasion,” says Kris. "We try and hit them with stuff that’s the right format for their station.”

“Kris seems to have some secret recipe that he doesn’t tell us about, a bit of a ‘midas touch’,” says Ed. “He enters us in all these competitions, sometimes without telling us.”

Hooster’s brand of retro indie rock also won them the honour of supporting Pacifier in Christchurch, and their debut EP ‘Rotate’ has just been released through Failsafe Records. “We started off quite poppy,” says Kris. “But we’re starting to get a bit more retro. We’re not trying to jump on a bandwagon or anything, we’re just enjoying playing that way now.”

The boys are also quite open-minded about experimenting with their sound – the drums on the first track Rotate were actually recorded in an abattoir. “It is a nice drum sound; we like trying out different locations to record – the places just take a bit of finding.”

Things haven’t always gone to plan though; Al had to fly back from Bangkok for the Pacifier support gigs, and Ed was in London when the first NZ On Air grant came through last year. “Kris managed to get hold of me and said, ‘By the way, we’ve just got a grant from NZOA’,” Ed recalls. “It was great, but pretty bad timing.”

Hooster are in the middle of recording their debut long player which – barring any other overseas jaunts – they hope to release early next year.