David Guetta
THE HARDKISS is a Ukrainian rock band founded in 2011 in Kyiv by vocalist Yuliia Sanina and guitarist, composer and music producer Valerii Bebko. Over the years, the band has developed its own sound at the intersection of alternative rock, hard rock, electronic music, pop rock and synth-driven electronics. One of THE HARDKISS’s defining features is the contrast between heavy guitar arrangements, electronic production and Sanina’s expressive vocals.
Among the band’s best-known songs are Babylon, Make-Up, Part of Me, Stones, Прірва, Organ, Tony, Talk!, Helpless, Perfection, Антарктида, Журавлі, Кораблі, Мелодія, Коханці, Жива, Гора, Кобра, Обійми, 7 вітрів, Сестра, Як ти?, Маяк, Festival, Мрійники, Тільки там, Crush, Tenderness, AiAiAi, Ursula and Take Me to the Start.
By 2026, THE HARDKISS had released five studio albums — Stones and Honey (2014), Perfection Is a Lie (2017), Залізна ластівка (2018), Жива і не залізна (2021) and Grey Hound (2026) — as well as the EP Cold Altair and the live album Акустика. Live. The band has repeatedly won Ukraine’s YUNA music awards, toured across Europe and the United States, and performed at major international festivals.
Yuliia Sanina and Valerii Bebko: the story before THE HARDKISS
The story of the future band began with the meeting of Yuliia Sanina and Valerii Bebko. Sanina, who was interested in journalism alongside music, met Bebko while preparing an interview: he was working at MTV Ukraine. Their communication soon developed into a creative partnership.
At first, the musicians performed as the duo Val & Sanina and recorded considerably more traditional Russian-language pop music. Sanina later admitted that this stage was largely the result of attempts to follow advice from television music editors and producers, while she herself had always been drawn to rock.
A new stage began after they met the Firework Sound team. The musicians were encouraged to switch to English and make the sound more internationally oriented. At the same time, they needed a new name.
That was how THE HARDKISS appeared. The name itself reflected the project’s musical contrast: the heavy, “hard” side of the arrangements was combined with a more melodic and emotional element — the symbolic “kiss.”
Babylon and the first concerts
THE HARDKISS made their first major statement with the video for Babylon, released in September 2011. It was directed by Valerii Bebko, who from the very beginning was responsible not only for music production but also for the band’s visual direction.
The earliest videos already displayed features that would later become permanent: carefully constructed color palettes, unusual costumes, makeup, symbolic sets and the sense of a separate visual universe.
Soon THE HARDKISS began performing in Kyiv and received opportunities to open concerts for international artists. During the first months of the band’s existence, they performed before British duo Hurts and American artist Solange Knowles.
October and Dance With Me followed Babylon. The project quickly stopped looking like a small studio experiment by Sanina and Bebko and began to develop into a full-scale live band.
Make-Up and the first awards
One of the defining works of the early period was Make-Up. The song continued the English-language electronic-rock direction, while the video firmly established THE HARDKISS’s reputation as a band for whom visual direction was an integral part of the music.
In 2012, the band was nominated for the MTV Europe Music Awards in the regional Best Ukrainian Act category.
At the YUNA 2013 ceremony, THE HARDKISS won two awards: Discovery of the Year and Best Music Video for Make-Up.
This was especially significant because the band received major national recognition even before releasing its first full-length album.
Stones and Honey
The debut studio album Stones and Honey was released on October 9, 2014. It was a large-scale record: the main digital edition contains 19 tracks and brings together virtually the entire early history of THE HARDKISS.
The album includes Make-Up, Part of Me, Hurricane, Stones, In Love, Dance With Me, Under the Sun, Babylon, Tell Me Brother and other songs from the band’s first years.
The title describes the internal principle of the band’s music well. The “stone” can be associated with the weight of the guitars and rhythm, while the “honey” represents the melodic and emotional side.
One of the album’s most important songs was Прірва — THE HARDKISS’s first original composition in Ukrainian. Yuliia Sanina wrote it under the impression of the tragic events in Kyiv during the Revolution of Dignity. Прірва marked the beginning of the band’s gradual movement from an almost entirely English-language repertoire toward a bilingual and later predominantly Ukrainian-language discography.
At YUNA 2015, Stones and Honey was named Best Album, while Stones won Best Song of the Year.
Cold Altair
In December 2015, the band released Cold Altair. Although digital services sometimes place it alongside the albums, structurally it is an EP, not THE HARDKISS’s second full studio album.
The eight-track release included Altair, Doctor Thomases, Hammer, Organ, Tony, Talk!, an acoustic reworking of Shadows of Time titled Shadows of Light, and additional versions of the material.
Cold Altair was darker and heavier than the earlier Stones and Honey. The movement toward alternative rock is especially noticeable here: electronic elements remain, but guitars and harder rhythms move to the foreground.
Helpless and the Eurovision 2016 national selection
In 2016, THE HARDKISS took part in Ukraine’s national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Helpless.
In the final, the band received the maximum six points from the jury and five from the viewers. Their overall result was 11 points — the same total as Jamala with 1944. Jamala won because she received a higher score in the public vote.
THE HARDKISS therefore finished in second place. Several months later, Jamala went on to win Eurovision 2016 in Stockholm.
Helpless remains one of the band’s best-known English-language compositions and clearly reflects the transitional stage between the early electronic sound and the much heavier music of the following years.
Perfection Is a Lie
The second studio album Perfection Is a Lie was released on April 7, 2017. The record contains 12 tracks and consolidated THE HARDKISS’s transition toward a heavier alternative sound.
The album includes Perfection, Organ, Tony, Talk!, Rain, Антарктида, Closer, Helpless and material from the Cold Altair period.
The title — “Perfection Is a Lie” — fits the philosophy of this stage well. THE HARDKISS were increasingly moving away from perfectly polished pop music and making greater use of heavy guitars, contrasting vocal states and dramatic transitions.
At YUNA 2017, the band was named Best Rock Band of Ukraine, while Perfection Is a Lie received a nomination for Best Album.
Журавлі and the definitive establishment of Ukrainian
One of the key turning points in THE HARDKISS’s history was the song Журавлі, released in 2017.
Unlike the band’s early English-language material, Sanina’s voice is placed almost entirely at the center of the composition. The song is built not around complex electronic production, but around melody, lyrics and gradually developing drama.
At YUNA 2018, Журавлі was named Best Ukrainian-Language Song, while THE HARDKISS won Best Rock Band for the second year in a row.
The success of the song demonstrated that Ukrainian could be more than an isolated experiment within an English-language catalog — it could become one of the central elements of the band’s musical identity.
Залізна ластівка
The third studio album Залізна ластівка was released on September 19, 2018 and became one of the band’s most ambitious projects. It contains 17 compositions with a total running time of around 53 minutes.
Key tracks include Журавлі, Коханці, Forever More, Free Me, Серце, Море, Кораблі, Де ти є, Хто, як не ти, Мелодія, Андромеда, Астронавт and Бувай.
The title itself accurately describes the album’s sound: the organic and the mechanical constantly collide, as an emotional voice meets a metallic electronic-rock environment.
Залізна ластівка also became an important point in the band’s linguistic transition. Ukrainian- and English-language songs now existed naturally within the same album, without any division into “local” and “international” material.
At YUNA 2019, THE HARDKISS were among the ceremony’s biggest winners, receiving awards for Best Rock Band, Best Album for Залізна ластівка and Best Live Show for the tour of the same name.
The acoustic side of THE HARDKISS
Despite their reputation as a heavy electronic-rock band, THE HARDKISS have repeatedly shown that their songs can exist without massive studio production.
This side was especially prominent in the Акустика program. In 2020, the band released the live album Акустика. Live, in which familiar material was rebuilt around live vocals and more intimate instrumental arrangements.
These versions emphasized that many THE HARDKISS songs are based not only on impressive production, but also on strong melodic construction capable of working in a much simpler form.
Жива і не залізна
The fourth studio album Жива і не залізна was released on May 21, 2021. It contains ten songs and differs noticeably in mood from the more expansive Залізна ластівка.
The record includes Жива, Гора, Кобра, Все було так, Обійми, 7 вітрів, Сестра and other compositions.
The title can be understood as a contrast with the previous album. If Залізна ластівка was built around metallic power and a large fantasy image, the new work focused more strongly on human vulnerability, relationships and emotional states.
One of its most notable songs was Кобра, recorded with MONATIK. The collaboration did not change the group’s core identity: electronic pop rhythm still combines with Sanina’s characteristic vocals and a heavier instrumental foundation.
At YUNA 2022, Жива і не залізна won Best Album, while THE HARDKISS once again won the Best Rock Band category.
After the beginning of the full-scale war
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, THE HARDKISS’s activities became closely connected with charity performances and support for Ukraine.
The band directed part of its income toward humanitarian aid and participated in charitable music initiatives abroad.
The music of this period also became much more directly connected with the Ukrainian experience. In Як ти?, a simple question becomes central — one that acquired an entirely different emotional weight after the outbreak of war.
Later came Маяк, one of the most significant songs of this period.
Eurovision 2023 and Маяк
In 2023, Yuliia Sanina became one of the hosts of the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool. The United Kingdom hosted the competition on behalf of Ukraine after Kalush Orchestra won the previous year.
THE HARDKISS also appeared in the official contest program: Маяк was performed during the opening of the first semi-final of Eurovision 2023 as part of a production dedicated to the connection between Liverpool and Ukraine.
For the band, this was a symbolic return to Eurovision seven years after taking part in the Ukrainian national selection themselves.
Два вікна, Festival, Мрійники and Тільки там
In 2023–2024, THE HARDKISS continued releasing predominantly Ukrainian-language material.
Два вікна became a new interpretation of a song by Gaitana. Rather than simply reproducing the original, the band transferred the composition into its own guitar-electronic aesthetic.
It was followed by Festival and Мрійники, a collaboration with TVORCHI.
In February 2024, Тільки там was released. This period continued the Ukrainian-language direction that had gradually developed since Прірва and had moved fully to the foreground after Залізна ластівка.
Grey Hound
After a long period focused on individual singles, the band decided for the first time in several years to concentrate specifically on creating a cohesive album.
Work on Grey Hound began in early 2025. According to Yuliia Sanina, after a European tour the musicians deliberately paused other activities to focus entirely on new songs. Creating the material took more than a year.
The fifth studio album Grey Hound was released on June 11, 2026. It contains 14 tracks:
- Intro
- Crush
- Take Me to the Start
- AiAiAi
- Nice
- Day After Day
- 1000
- Ursula
- Underwater
- Tenderness
- I Love You feat. THE HARA
- Stay
- Opera
- Outro
Apple Music classifies Grey Hound as hard rock, and it is indeed one of THE HARDKISS’s heaviest releases.
However, its main distinction lies not only in the level of guitar aggression. The album was created as a complete work rather than as a collection of previously released singles. Intro and Outro form a frame, the compositions flow into one another, and the central symbolic character is Time.
According to Sanina, Grey Hound is connected with the image of constantly moving time — a witness to human relationships, losses, returns and attempts to find one’s place. Even the title works on several levels at once: as a “grey pursuer” and as an association with the greyhound, one of the fastest dog breeds.
Crush, Tenderness and the new heaviness
One of the first songs from the new period was Crush. The composition is built around a powerful guitar riff and demonstrates THE HARDKISS’s return to a more direct rock sound after several years dominated mainly by Ukrainian-language singles.
Tenderness, by contrast, preserves the band’s more emotional side, while AiAiAi relies more heavily on rhythm and electronic elements.
I Love You features British alternative rock band THE HARA, making it one of the album’s notable international collaborations.
Opera holds a special place on Grey Hound. Yuliia Sanina has described it as one of the album’s closest songs to her personally because of its wide vocal range and emotional development.
15th anniversary and international concerts
The release of Grey Hound coincided with a new international stage for THE HARDKISS. In 2026, the band celebrates fifteen years since its founding and is undertaking a large European anniversary tour.
The concert schedule includes Germany, Poland, Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and other countries.
At the same time, THE HARDKISS expanded their festival geography. Their 2026 schedule includes Wacken Open Air, Escalation Fest, Rockowizna and other major European events.
Thus, a band that originally planned to build an international career through English-language music returned to that goal fifteen years later with a substantial Ukrainian discography and a fully formed style of its own.
The visual style of THE HARDKISS
The visual dimension has always been just as important to THE HARDKISS as the music itself.
Valerii Bebko plays a major role in this aspect. In addition to guitars, synthesizers and music production, he is involved in the creative direction of the project and has directed the band’s music videos.
As a result, THE HARDKISS videos rarely look like ordinary filmed performances. Babylon, Make-Up, Stones, Organ, Журавлі, Кораблі and later works are constructed as independent visual pieces with their own characters, costumes and dramatic structure.
Yuliia Sanina’s stage image has also become an independent part of the band’s aesthetic. Costumes, makeup and hairstyles change from album to album and are usually connected with the visual concept of each particular period.
This is why THE HARDKISS are difficult to perceive through sound alone. Music, videos, stage design, clothing and album artwork usually exist as elements of one artistic project.
Musical style
At the core of THE HARDKISS is rock, but almost no stage of the band’s career has been limited to traditional guitar-based sound.
Early songs such as Babylon and Make-Up are clearly connected with electronic pop and synthesizers.
Stones and Honey combines alternative rock with electronic production and pop melody.
Cold Altair and Perfection Is a Lie strengthen the heavier side.
Залізна ластівка combines rock, electronic music and a larger, almost cinematic dramatic structure.
Жива і не залізна places greater emphasis on emotional songcraft.
On Grey Hound, the band once again significantly increases the role of guitars and hard rock while retaining synthesizers and carefully constructed studio production.
The main constant remains Yuliia Sanina’s voice. Her vocals can move from quiet, intimate delivery to powerful rock singing, allowing her to connect material that can differ significantly in genre.
From English to Ukrainian and back again
THE HARDKISS’s linguistic history closely reflects the development of the band itself.
The first years were built almost entirely around English. Babylon, Make-Up, Part of Me, Stones, Organ and much of the early catalog were created with an international audience in mind.
The first major turning point was Прірва in 2014.
After Журавлі, Кораблі and Залізна ластівка, Ukrainian became one of the central foundations of the band’s work, while Жива і не залізна almost completely consolidated that transition.
After 2022, Ukrainian-language material dominated new releases — Як ти?, Маяк, Festival, Мрійники and Тільки там.
Grey Hound once again significantly increased the share of English-language material. This time, however, it was no longer an attempt to distance the band from the Ukrainian scene in pursuit of the international market, as it had been at the very beginning of the career. English- and Ukrainian-language songs now exist within one fully formed THE HARDKISS identity.
THE HARDKISS lineup
The foundation of the project throughout its history has remained Yuliia Sanina and Valerii Bebko. By 2026, the official lineup is as follows:
- Yuliia Sanina — vocals, piano;
- Valerii Bebko — guitars, synthesizers, music production;
- Klym Lysiuk — bass guitar, synthesizers;
- Yevhen Kibeliev — drums.
At the same time, THE HARDKISS have never been a band in which every member performs an identical songwriting function. The central creative partnership is Sanina and Bebko: they write the songs and shape the musical and visual concept, while the live lineup performs the material as a full rock band.
THE HARDKISS studio discography
Stones and Honey — 2014
The debut album, bringing together the band’s early English-language period.
Key songs: Make-Up, Part of Me, Hurricane, Stones, Under the Sun, Babylon, Прірва.
Perfection Is a Lie — 2017
The second studio album and the transition toward a heavier alternative sound.
Key songs: Perfection, Organ, Tony, Talk!, Rain, Антарктида, Helpless.
Залізна ластівка — 2018
One of the band’s most ambitious albums: 17 songs combining Ukrainian- and English-language material.
Key compositions: Журавлі, Коханці, Free Me, Море, Кораблі, Мелодія, Андромеда, Бувай.
Жива і не залізна — 2021
A more intimate and emotional work featuring predominantly Ukrainian-language material.
Key songs: Жива, Гора, Кобра, Все було так, Обійми, 7 вітрів, Сестра.
Grey Hound — 2026
The fifth studio album and one of THE HARDKISS’s heaviest works. Conceptually, the record is built around the image of Time.
Key compositions: Crush, Take Me to the Start, AiAiAi, Ursula, Tenderness, I Love You, Opera.
Other major releases
Cold Altair — 2015 — an eight-track EP featuring Organ, Tony, Talk!, Altair, Doctor Thomases and Hammer.
Акустика. Live — 2020 — a live album presenting THE HARDKISS songs in more intimate arrangements.
The main songs of THE HARDKISS
Among the band’s most significant works are:
Babylon, Dance With Me, Make-Up, Part of Me, Hurricane, Stones, Прірва, Organ, Tony, Talk!, Helpless, Perfection, Антарктида, Журавлі, Кораблі, Коханці, Мелодія, Серце, Жива, Гора, Кобра, Обійми, 7 вітрів, Сестра, Як ти?, Маяк, Festival, Мрійники, Тільки там, Crush, Tenderness, AiAiAi, Ursula and Take Me to the Start.
Main awards
- YUNA 2013 — Discovery of the Year and Best Music Video for Make-Up;
- YUNA 2015 — Best Album for Stones and Honey and Best Song for Stones;
- YUNA 2017 — Best Rock Band;
- YUNA 2018 — Best Rock Band and Best Ukrainian-Language Song for Журавлі;
- YUNA 2019 — Best Rock Band, Best Album for Залізна ластівка and Best Live Show;
- YUNA 2021 — Best Rock Band;
- YUNA 2022 — Best Rock Band and Best Album for Жива і не залізна.
The significance of THE HARDKISS for Ukrainian music
THE HARDKISS emerged at a time when much of Ukraine’s mainstream rock and pop scene still viewed an international career and the domestic market as two separate territories.
At first, the band itself tried to solve this problem through the English language and a Western-oriented sound. Gradually, however, its story developed in a much more interesting direction.
Прірва demonstrated that Ukrainian lyrics could exist naturally within heavy electronic music. Журавлі turned that direction into a major mainstream success. Залізна ластівка made Ukrainian a central part of the album’s aesthetic, while Жива і не залізна finally proved that the band no longer needed to choose between national identity and a modern international sound.
At the same time, THE HARDKISS never abandoned their original international ambitions. Grey Hound once again increased the share of English-language material and brought the band into a new wave of European festivals and tours, but only after their own musical identity had been fully formed.
This is why THE HARDKISS occupy a distinct place in contemporary Ukrainian rock music. Over fifteen years, they have evolved from an English-language Kyiv project debuting with Babylon into a band with five studio albums, large-scale live productions, Ukrainian and international audiences, and a visual language of their own.
At the foundation of this journey remains the same creative partnership: Yuliia Sanina’s voice and lyrics, together with Valerii Bebko’s music, guitars, production and visual thinking. This combination allows THE HARDKISS to change language and genre balance without losing their identity — from Make-Up and Stones to Журавлі, Маяк and Grey Hound.
