Laneway Festival musician Eves The Behavior has synesthesia, allowing her to see colours when she sings and hears music

Colourful tunes ... Eves The Behavior is a synesthete who sees colours when she hears music. Picture: Bradley Hunter Source: News Corp Australia

IMAGINE hearing a song and seeing it as colours. Or being introduced to someone and have their name appear in your brain as a particular shade of brown, blue, green or red.

Emerging Australian singer songwriter Eves The Behavior can tell you that her new single TV is a dark, murky green.

The 20-year-old musician, born Hannah Karydas, has synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon which links two or more senses.

In her case, letters and music are associated with colours.

Sensory overload ... Hannah Karydas first noticed her mixed senses when she was a child and saw her friend’s name as the colour orange. Picture: Bradley Hunter Source: News Corp Australia

She noticed this extra-sensory connection as a child, “seeing” her friend Jordan’s name as orange.

She tells me my name is a “goldeny, caramel brown”.

Zen, the song which got her signed to an Australian record deal, is “very orange/dirty gold-flecked with a dark maroon”.

Although it is rare, other famous synesthetes include Happy hitmaker Pharrell Williams and Billy Joel.

Karydas said her songs tend to explore human’s negative emotions — frustration, anger, sadness and melancholy — so her sensory colour palette is darker.

And definitely no pastels or fluoros.

Happy man ... Pharrell Williams also has synesthesia. Picture: AP Source: AP

“Colours have emotional value so I only lean towards the colours that fit in with what I am trying to portray as a singer and a songwriter,” she explained.

“I don’t really use bright colours but I love primary colours, just more dirty versions of them.

“If I think about the singles I am putting out this year, one is a blue, a green, an orange and a red and they tend to have umber undertones, more earthy.”

The songwriter is happiest with her work when a song stays the same colour from writing to the finished recording.

Another synesthete ... US singer Billy Joel. Picture: AP Source: AP

“If the colour is the same all the way through to it being finished, then I think I have done a really good job on it, that it is true to its original form,” she said.

Originally known as Eves, she added “The Behavior”, inspired by her fascination with the human psyche, when discovering two other artists internationally with that moniker.

The American spelling is intentional as the young artist plans to launch her career in the US as well this year.

She built a considerable buzz last year with the single Zen and is expected to be one of the breakout local artists on the Laneway Festival which kicks off this weekend in Brisbane and Sydney.

Eves The Behavior, Zen

Karydas said she knew she would be a musician from a young age.

“From when I was about 12 and people would try to tell me to go to university or have a back-up plan, I would tell them that I don’t have a back up plan because giving myself a back up plan allows myself to think that I have failed already,” she said.

“I think that little sentiment has got me to where I am at this point, with quite a healthy amount of buzz and people really liking what I am doing.

“You can capitalise on even the smallest of audiences.”

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