Václav Havelka

Václav Havelka is a singer, composer, music manager, producer and activist. For more than 20 years, he has been one of the most prominent figures on the Czech independent music scene. Having dedicated himself to singing, songwriting, and playing the guitar since he was twenty, he performed solo as selFbrush and since 2005 also as the frontman of the indie rock band Please the Trees, promoting environmental issues and the complexities of intergenerational relations. The band has released five albums to date, three of them were recorded in the USA and two won the Czech music critics award in 2012 and 2015. Please the Trees were the support act on European tours of Mudhoney and Two Gallants, Thurston Moore Group, Robert Plant, Steve Gunn, Kurt Vile, and The Smashing Pumpkins, and performed four American tours between 2010 and 2016. Since 2021, he has been involved in the interdisciplinary project Future Landscapes with the band fyield, using sound to explore the impact of humans on climate change. In 2023, the project toured in the USA and fyield became the first Czech band to have performed live on the KEXP radio in Seattle. In addition to his own music projects (Golden Spine, Sonic Herbalism) and a number of current and past collaborations with artists, including Irena & Vojtěch Havel, Martin Tvrdý, The Ectasy of Saint Theresa and others. He is the music programming director at the MeetFactory arts centre in Prague.