H. Pruz is the NYC-based songwriting project of Hannah Pruzinsky. This April, she played her first show in Minnesota at the Turf Club alongside Skullcrusher and June McDoom. Before her set I got to chat with her about songwriting, DIY touring and DIY music journalism. 

You’re currently near the end of your tour with Skullcrusher, how long have you been out on this run? 

(Hannah)  It's been a little over three weeks, we’ll be home in a week, which is crazy. 

On this run you’re playing on your own as H. Pruz, and you're also in Skullcrusher's band right? 

Yeah, I've been playing bass, and also doing some vocal distortion stuff in Helen [from Skullcrusher]'s set, which has been really cool… This is the first time I've played in Helen’s band. Helen sang on my record... And we recently worked on someone else's [recording] and sang together, but this is my first time singing in her band. It's been really fun. 

I know from your social media that a lot of the previous tours you've done this year have been DIY and alternative venues, how does this tour feel different?

A lot of the places have a green room, which is, in and of itself, a huge luxury that I did not have before. Paying in people's apartments… I feel like I have to be a lot more ‘on’ socially with DIY touring. Which I really like a lot, but when we're on the road for a month… I don't think I could sustain just hanging out in someone's house with no private room at all for a month straight. But I think it still is my favorite type of touring to do, DIY touring and playing with local bands and getting to meet people… Yeah, it makes me very happy.

Do you have any favorite weird venues you've played? 

That's a good question. On this tour… We played Kilby Court in Salt Lake City, this all ages DIY space, which was really cool. It was semi outdoors, and it seemed like a great long established all-ages space. Prior to that, what's the weirdest show? I played underneath a communist bookstore in Philly in an unfinished basement, and there weren’t even any microphone stands. We had to hang the mics from the exposed pipes in the ceiling to sing… It was really fun. And I play a lot of living rooms. I think those are some of my favorite shows.

What makes a good living room for playing in? 

Well, I've played in rooms where there's five people, and I played in rooms where there's maybe 40, and I think both are great. People are there for the music for the most part, with house shows. With bars, it gets into this hazy area where you could be playing to people that just want to be drinking. And I totally get it if you don't want to listen to my songs when you're drinking… The house show, the point isn't the alcohol, which is nice, and you get to talk to people and mingle in a way where…I don't have to do that at a venue if I don't want to, and sometimes it's good to be forced to do that.

Today you have a band with you, How does it feel different to on the stage with a band versus on your own?

Yeah. It's myself, Felix [on drums] who is the co-producer for my past two albums, and Johnny, who plays bass in my band, and has toured with me before. It feels so much better, getting to play louder songs and actually be a lot more engrossed in the power of a song. There's just more chaos and room for randomness. When I play alone… I'm interacting with the crowd and with the room, but when I'm with a band, I'm interacting with two other people [on stage] And that's really cool to see where we lead each other. 

Is your set tonight gonna be all stuff from your new album, or do you have any older bits sprinkled in there?

Actually I only play one or two from the new album… I play three from my old album, and one [brand] new one. I love playing new songs live… It's fun to figure out what it will look like recorded through playing it live.

Speaking of the new album which came out in November, what did the writing process for that look like? 

Well, I wrote Force shortly after my first album came out… the month after I released my first album I had like, two months alone in our apartment in Queens, and I just spent the time writing and demoing songs alone. Forced solitude helps the songs come out. 

What did the recording process look like? 

Hmm, I remember Felix was gone on a tour, in their own project, and I was really inspired to get some songs down that I had been playing around with. So I decided to demo as many songs as I felt compelled to track alone, and that was just me playing acoustic guitar and piano in our house and recording it all. When Felix came home two months later, I showed them all the songs, and they were like, We should record this, and we should do it analog, do it to tape. I loved recording the first album with them, [Felix] and it was really special, we wanted to recreate that forced solitude experience of going somewhere for a month to record.

Where did you go to record it? 

We went to upstate New York. We brought all of our gear and the tape machines. We'd invite friends up to play some bass, or like, whatever instruments we needed.

Did you feel a sense of place influenced your creative practice much? Either speaking about the apartment in NYC or the Cabin upstate where you recorded. 

Definitely. Being in our apartment alone really unleashes this obsessive side to myself with recording. Then going upstate, we were upstate for the entire month of January, so it was freezing cold. We were in the middle of nowhere and it was just the two of us, so a lot of the time we were feeling stir crazy, and it was cool to channel that into music. For the first album, we were upstate as well, but in a cabin with no running water, no bathroom, so we were, like, peeing in cups and that was a whole other situation… but there was a lot of warmth to that one, and this album, I feel like it's a little bit colder and more desolate.

I absolutely hear the cold

I want to make an album in the summer, I think, I’m wanting to stray away from the cold. 

Were there any big influences, music or other creative projects that went into this record? 

Yeah, especially making the demos, I was thinking a lot of the album Lost Wisdom [by Mount Eeeire]. I love how stark it is. It's very empty, but so moving. It's one of my favorite albums. Then when we started adding more full band elements, a lot of the drums were kinda Harvest [Neil Young] inspired. In general I’m a big fan of one take of an entire thing, not cutting and pasting a lot of things, just trying to capture the energy of a moment.

How about these days? Any favorite albums that you're obsessed with, things that are getting inspired? 

Recently… I've been listening to Kate Bush for the first time in my life… The Dreaming I've been really loving. Her use of melody and the way she plays with her voice is crazy and extremely inspiring to me. I've been listening to the Songs: Ohia album Magnolia Electric Co a lot, I love that as a driving record.  I’m also inspired by playing in my friend's bands, and getting to hear their influences… listening to a lot of Suicide, some Lou Reed. 

In addition to being a musician, you're also a writer and an editor, can you tell me more about that?

Yeah, I co-created and I co-edit a show paper called Gunk. It's based in New York City. It's a physical paper zine, I think it's 16 pages at this point. It’s riso printed, it's basically a big show calendar of all of the DIY shows happening in NYC every month, and there's some articles too. We do this series called DIY America, where we have people talk about cool places to book in their town. I do that with my best friend, Cece, who I'm in a band called Sister With. She's the best. I'm constantly hearing lots of new music because of [the zine] and looking for shows because of that. It's very... It's humbling to be an artist, amidst hearing all of these other people's new music in the city I live in that’s really cool… I think it's good to be humbled in that way. 

I love all the images of your Zine that I've seen, the riso work is gorgeous 

Yeah, the design work is by Secret Reso Club, Gonzalo Guerrero He's amazing, 

Is there a way for people to find that if they're not in New York?

Yeah, we have a substack, It's completely free, called the gunkyard at substack. Everything that we post in the zines, we post online. If you do decide to subscribe for $10 a month, you can choose to have gunk mailed to you. So you can get it in Minnesota, or wherever. It's very important to us, though, that it's free, and we’re funded completely by donations

Is there anything upcoming for you that you'd like to plug?

Yeah I am about to do another run of shows with Jeffrey Martin, starting in Kentucky and ending in Missouri. Sadly, I won't be going through Minnesota, I would love to come back. I'm gonna be releasing a song that I've been playing on this tour, a demo version of it sometime soon… I love demo versions of songs… that's the kind of sound I love hearing, and I'm like, You know what? I love the demo. Why redo it?  

Interview By: Elvy Ruchie (4.6.2026)