After a recent Dirty Projectors show, I confessed my undying love for Haley Dekle, the group’s recently added backup vocalist. My friends weren’t buying it. “She doesn’t DO anything,” they protested, acting as if I had the hots for the girl at the merch table. They were obviously drawing on Rachel Dawes’ advice to Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan’s excellent Batman Begins: “It’s not who you are underneath… it’s what you do that defines you.”
But come on: Katie Holmes is full of shit. Haley Dekle may not have her own song to sing, and she may not be wielding a guitar or a keyboard or a flannel jacket, but who really cares? That girl is radiant as fuck. She doesn’t even have to sing; her job could be sitting on stage and giving the band a big thumbs up, and she’d still be my favorite. Plus, it’s not like backup singers are trivial, and when you’re talking about the complex vocal layering of the Dirty Projectors, none of the singers are really “backing up” anybody. Bottom line: Haley Dekle pulls her weight, haters be damned.
Unfortunately, the internet doesn’t seem to have much information on Ms. Dekle, lending credence to my theory that Dave Longstreth bionically engineered her. But hey, if she wanted to do an interview with Hipster Wife Hunting and shed some light on her mysterious origins, I wouldn’t stop her. Just saying.
- H
