Artist feature: Hatori

Hosanna Deseno has the originality and good humor gained from an abundance of life experience. A Denver-based singer-songwriter blending R&B, indie, and pop influences across a smattering of self-produced singles, she performs as Hatori (her mom’s maiden name and a nod to her Japanese heritage). Refreshingly candid, Deseno is currently documenting her creative process as part of ‘A Song a Week Challenge,’ available in a collection called ‘They Can’t All Be Bangers.’ Her latest release, ‘Heliotrope,’ made in collaboration with artist Nethermead, is Deseno’s fourth single released this year. 

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Sitting across from me at Hooked on Colfax, Deseno pours coffee from a French press, while it snows heavily outside. “Colorful” is the word she chooses to describe her upbringing. She is the daughter of Christian missionaries, who were at one point spreading the gospel specifically to Chinese people. 

“Neither of them are Chinese,” Deseno laughs. “My mom is Japanese, and my dad is American. They met in school to learn Mandarin, which is so bizarre. So they speak that to each other, and none of us knows what’s going on.” 

In 1990, Deseno’s parents were trying to move to China. But dust was settling from the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and they were diverted to Taiwan where Deseno was born. After that, her family spent two years in China and four years in Japan, before moving to Oxford in the UK, where she took a crash course in English and lived from age eight to 16. 

“They put my brothers and me in special education classes because they didn’t know what to do with us,” she says. “They didn’t have ESL courses or anything like that.” 

A tween in England at the height of pop stardom, Deseno was originally turned off by the late 90s craze for artists like the Spice Girls but was swiftly converted. 

“Specifically, by the powerful female vocalists,” she says. “Christina Aguilera, P!nk, Destiny’s Child…I wanted to emit that energy but was cripplingly shy at the time. I was absorbing it all but didn’t want anyone to hear me sing…music as a performance didn’t happen until way later.”

The missionary organization that Deseno’s parents worked for was headquartered in Littleton, Colorado, so as a Junior, she enrolled at Arapahoe High School. A self-described third-culture kid living in four countries throughout her adolescence, she’s stayed in the Denver area ever since. 

“Our superpower is to adapt in any situation and to read people,” Deseno says of herself and her brothers. “We’re very smart in learning to decode intent and in untangling all sorts of cultural mysteries…It’s made us very curious about the human condition as a whole because we’ve seen the similarities across countries and continents, and also the vast differences in language and social norms.” 

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Then on the church stage, Deseno started singing. 

“It was a very…somatic experience,” she says. 

The pressure of performing drove her to improve. She learned the Nashville Number System, which felt like cracking a certain code. Still, Deseno was relatively reserved in her expression. After graduating high school, unsure of how her parents could support college tuition for all of her siblings, she chose a different route: seminary school. 

“I don’t know how far back you looked in my socials,” she wonders. “But yeah, it turned out to be a cult.” 

Deseno had signed on for the Master’s Commission in Atlanta, Georgia, a two-year discipleship program which has since been shut down due to sexual misconduct allegations against the program’s director. 

“A lot of songs that I’ve written have a religious perspective and are about that time in my life,” she says. “Because it was the first time that I was really confronted with every single thing that I believe and why I believe it.”

While Deseno hasn’t left Christianity as a belief system, she has abandoned it as an organized religion. Only after deconstructing her beliefs and the religious expectations holding her back did she finally feel free to write her own music. 

“Religion is supposed to be vulnerable and sweet and supportive – but it was the complete opposite,” she says. “It stuffed me down and hid me away. I could never center myself or do anything just for me.” 

A silver lining is that Deseno learned a lot musically while at the Master’s Commission. The school was part of a majority Black population gospel church, and she sang in the choir. 

“That’s where I learned most of my musical theory knowledge. It was life-changing what they taught me in terms of vocals, tones, dynamics…I wouldn’t be where I’m at today without that education.” 

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Since then, she’s honed her skills in songwriting, mixing, and production, leading her to release self-produced singles like “Pull Me Under.” 

A track she says is about generational trauma and personal struggles – the source of her own institutionalization and chronic illness – that she didn’t want to face for a long time. 

“Honestly, I didn’t know if I was going to make it up until I was about 25,” she says. “Like I couldn’t bring myself to plan for the future until about then.” 

The song is a soulful (and playful) acknowledgment that there are certain things you can’t outrun. After years and countless dollars invested in medication, therapy, and specialist visits, Deseno has come a long way. 

“I was really pissed about it for a long time because it was interrupting everything,” she says. “But now I’m healthy enough to have a family and to be making music…I would not have the life that I have now if I hadn’t been forced to face it.”

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Deseno, now 33, is married and has a 3-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son. 

“Having kids is the reason I’m doing music to be honest,” she says. “How am I going to tell my kids to do what they love, if I can’t do that? They’re watching me…I could’ve probably made more excuses for the rest of my life if they weren’t.” 

Motherhood has also made Deseno a more creative and efficient artist. With limited pockets of time to do focused work, it means she just has to do it. 

“Sometimes I dream about what it would be like to have five hours in one day to work on a song,” she muses. “But I don’t know that I would be any better.” 

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You can follow Hatori on Instagram, Spotify, and YouTube. Catch her live December 7th with Dylanovus and Mango Slushy at The Black Buzzard (link to tix)!