Hanni El Khatib

Hanni El Khatib
Hanni El Khatib at Rock am Ring, Germany, 2013
Background information
Born	1981
Genres	Rock, blues rock
Occupation(s)	Musician, songwriter, producer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, mellotron, drums
Years active	2010–present
Associated acts	Dan Auerbach
Website	www.hannielkhatib.com

Hanni El Khatib (born June 8, 1981) is a San Francisco-born singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist songwriter and producer as well as visual director and co-owner of the Los Angeles-based independent record label Innovative Leisure. His 2013 sophomore full-length Head In The Dirt was produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. His most recent full-length album Moonlight was released on Jan. 20, 2015. He was described by the Guardian as a “former skate-punk raised on vintage rock and R&B [who] is keeping the spirit of 76 alive with his primal raunch ‘n’ roll.”

Hanni El Khatib, a first-generation American, who was raised in San Francisco, California by a Palestinian father and a Filipino mother. He grew up skateboarding and listening to 60s soul, surf music, doo-wop and British invasion bands like the Beatles and the Zombies. He took piano lessons as a child and learned to play the guitar between age 11 and 12. He attended art school but dropped out before graduating.

While employed as creative director for streetwear label HUF, he recorded himself singing and playing acoustic guitar as a hobby. He spent a year recording his songs with electric guitar and drums at the suggestion of friend and studio engineer Marc Bianchi of Her Space Holiday. After participating in a 2009 art show in San Francisco, he began circulating a homemade CDR of his music, one of which he gave to Innovative Leisure label co-founder Jamie Strong.

He was signed to Innovative Leisure in 2010. His debut was the 7” vinyl single “Dead Wrong,” released on September 21, 2010, backed with a cover of the 1931 song "You Rascal You" most famously recorded by Louis Armstrong. His second 7” vinyl single “Build. Destroy. Rebuild.” b/w “Loved One” was released on November 3, 2010. During this time, he would perform live and begin touring extensively, including a tour with Florence and the Machine, as a duo with drummer and longtime friend Nicky Fleming-Yaryan. He quickly developed a substantial audience.

His debut album Will The Guns Come Out was released on Innovative Leisure on September 27, 2011. It was described by the Los Angeles Times as “a taut, muscular collection of rock ‘n’ roll” and by The Guardian as “if Joe Strummer came back as an angry young Filipino-Palestinian American.” Much of this record consisted of the tracks recorded with Bianchi.