Burning bright, Tinlicker’s newest track is heating up the Coachella Valley.
“I Started A Fire,” which also features vocals by Hero Baldwin, follows the electronic and dance music duo’s 2024 album “Cold Enough For Snow.” Composed of members Jordi van Achthoven and Micha Heyboer, Tinlicker played the track at the first weekend of the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Heyboer spoke with the Daily Bruin’s Sanjana Chadive about the composition of “I Started A Fire” and his experience performing it at Coachella.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Daily Bruin: “I Started A Fire” explores ideas like lost love and yearning. What prompted you to explore these ideas?
Micha Heyboer: It was actually Hero (Baldwin), the singer, who came up with the vocals for the song and the lyrics. It’s a personal song for her. It’s really about her personal life and not so much about ours. But then again, it (the message) is everybody’s right? The search for being loved and recognized and losing that is painful and beautiful at the same time.
DB: Can you tell me a little bit about collaborating with Baldwin on this track? Did you learn anything about your own musical process while working with her?
MH: She’s done vocals for us before, like for the tracks “Rebirth” and “Tell Me,” and we’re actually planning to work more with her. This is the next step of our career – working more with fewer people but building a better relationship between the two of us, I guess. She’s an amazing vocalist.
It’s always nice to work with other people than yourself, because Jordi and I already have been working together for so long, and it becomes more like an autopilot sometimes. To have a different perspective of what you’re doing always triggers new things and new opportunities. It always brings new energy and sometimes a bit (of) friction. The whole process is sometimes tiring, but also beautiful. She has so much energy that it’s infectious, so that’s great.
DB: Natural elements like fires and waterfalls are woven throughout “I Started A Fire.” How do these metaphors enforce the song’s message?
MH: It (fire) is a dangerous element, but also something we need to have the life that we live. People always respond more when there’s vocals involved, because they can respond to or relate to their words instead of a melody. The words actually add to the melody. It becomes so much stronger than just the song. With Hero, you always feel that what she’s singing is real. It’s not like someone else wrote the song for her, and she’s pretending to live it. She actually lives what she sings. You can directly feel when she means it. Even if it’s the metaphors you can feel, she’s been through all that.
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DB: What kinds of emotions did you experience while playing “I Started A Fire” at Coachella last weekend? What do you hope people took away from your set?
MH: Everybody seems to be doing something else when it comes to the dance part of the industry that we’re in. We were performing at the Yuma Tent, which was mainly DJs playing house music. The trend is that everything is speeding up tempo-wise. We’re still at the tempo that we like, which is around 124 beats per minute, but everybody’s faster. A little bit before we had to go on, I was like, “Oh, is this going to be our dip in energy or tempo going to influence the crowd?” You start thinking about stuff like that. Then again, people are there to see you, and they know what you’re doing.
I think we played it as a second track, and it just sets the tone for the rest of what we were doing, which is great. Instantly, it felt good. Coachella is a big thing. Even coming from the Netherlands, everybody knows Coachella. (It is) pretty crazy that it is in a desert. This was close to 40 degrees Celsius. I don’t know what it is in Fahrenheit, but I was just surprised how much heat there is.
I actually really appreciate that America is open to what we’re doing, and it always feels like a warm welcome. That’s nice for us. It’s an important market for us. We’re working on a lot of new music, but more news about that soon. It’s a great adventure, and hopefully people will join this adventure that we’re on.
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