What the hell has NME signed up for? We’re at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon, and South London’s buzziest new talent, Heartworms, has just appointed herself our unofficial tour guide. There’s no better person to lead us around: she volunteers here nearly every week under her real name, Jojo Orme, as the sole regular below retirement age. As we stroll through the hangars, she takes great pains to point out how many times she’s cleaned a plane, restored the paint, or sat in it and imagined herself in the sky…
Heartworms on The Cover of NME. Credit: Jamie Waters for NME
“That is, for me, the right way to be myself,” she affirms in her gentle lilt. “It makes me happy, and it grounds me, and it makes me feel as if I don’t really have to worry about anything.”
Around the same time she first visited two years ago, the courteous Cheltenham native launched her fearsome solo project, Operation Heartworms. She joined forces with tastemakers Speedy Wunderground and dropped the icy, gothic debut single ‘Consistent Dedication’, where Heartworms ratchets the tension till it reaches a distressing breaking point, shrieking: “Ugly is the man / He’ll chew his eyes!”
Orme’s talent is fierce, and her reputation as a fast-rising star is fiercer. Unleashing her debut EP ‘A Comforting Notion’ in January 2024, she’s gained a cult following for her unforgettable live shows, eyeballing the crowd and jerking instinctively to the music. She’s since toured with The Kills in America and supported St. Vincent at The Royal Albert Hall. Now, with an impeccable run of singles and a growing audience hungry for more, Heartworms will execute the final stage of her current campaign: her debut album, ‘Glutton For Punishment’.
“Every sound you hear is a feeling and a very meaningful one”
“This is the Fiat CR.42 Falco,” Heartworms announces. It’s a squat little thing, its wings rounded off into pleasant curves. It crashed in Suffolk, she explains, and its Italian pilot was reportedly thrilled to be in enemy territory “because he became a prisoner of war by the British”. “He was like, ‘I don’t want to be in a war anymore; I’m so sick of the Germans’,” she grins. “‘Take me in!’”
There’s an odd charm to the delightfully nerdy Heartworms. Anyone who follows her can easily reel off her fixations: codebreaking, poetry, and, of course, her beloved Spitfire (who else could achieve the first music artist-inspired Airfix collaboration?).
You can imagine just how passionately Heartworms feels about the music she makes. She closes her eyes as she discusses her love for gothic aesthetics and “the details and accents” of its architecture: “It’s all very interesting, and I’ll never get sick of it.” Likening the sound of a snare drum to “a gunshot”, she clutches her chest: “I have to re-enact it on stage because that’s what it feels like.” Then she shuts her eyes again, waving her hands in the air like a conductor as she explains: “Every sound you hear is a feeling and a very meaningful one; it’s not just put in willy-nilly.”
Credit: Jamie Waters for NME
If the music doesn’t entrance you enough, Orme’s idiosyncratic vocal delivery should do the trick. Whether it’s a bellowed command (“Remove the chain! My wrists are in strain!”) or a menacing whisper (“Can you feel it coming?”), Heartworms knows exactly how to put you on edge. There’s rarely a linear narrative running through the songs, and you suspect it’s a form of protection for her: “My mind remembers things that people have said, things I’ve said, but it’s the emotion attached to those sounds. It won’t make sense unless I break it down and put little lines.”
Even if it isn’t immediately clear what Heartworms sings about, an undeniable darkness seeps into every song. “I feel comfortable in it,” she admits. “I mean, happiness is not even a real emotion to me. There’s joy in a moment, or content. Most of the time, I’m not content – I’m in a dark place and trying to figure things out. That’s just the way I am, and I’m always going to be this way.”
Sometimes, you don’t know whether to be charmed or concerned by Heartworms’ matter-of-fact nature. We arrive at the colossal Avro Lancaster R5868, the steely crown jewel of Hangar Five. She points out its “tattoos”, or the small yellow bombs painted on its side denoting every mission it’s embarked on. The average Avro Lancaster might have been deployed 21 times; tot up the “tattoos” on this one, and you’ll get 137.
Credit: Jamie Waters for NME
“I once met a guy who had a family tie to this,” Orme says casually. “He was crying because he felt the emotions connected to it. It’s such a grand connection because it’s so big. He just came up to me and was like, ‘Can you take a photo?’ with tears streaming… it was such a strange situation.”
That discomfort arises again when we talk about her fascination with military history. It permeates many of the songs on ‘Glutton For Punishment’; lead single ‘Warplane’ documents the tragic death of Spitfire pilot William Gibson Gordon at just 20. A chugging, fizzing bass and grand, operatic chorus see the singer proclaim: “Oh, look up theeeere / We’ll be freeeee!” Meanwhile, follow-up single ‘Extraordinary Wings’ is a sleek, simmering and very definitive anti-war statement: “I don’t wish murder, ‘cause I got no right.” Heartworms’ military obsession can make one feel queasy – but evidently, there’s something deeper in it for her.
Standing in a hangar filled with bombers, NME notes that there’s a lot of destruction in this room. Heartworms concurs, running through a spiel she’s seemingly prepared beforehand: the planes are machines built by humans and only turned into weapons by humans. What she’s appreciating are simply innocent contraptions, art detached from their artists.
But then she says something more interesting. “It’s easy to make [war] a reality when you’re around these things because you’re not hiding from it,” she says plainly. “You become more aware of it every day.”
“I want people to understand that it’s fine to just be honest about how you feel”
Perhaps Heartworms’ unflinching attitude to conflict can also be explained by her childhood. While ‘Glutton For Punishment’ gives an overview of the general human lust for suffering, the record partially alludes to her difficult relationship with her mother.
She unintentionally kick-started Heartworms’ career by grounding the then-14-year-old for the grave offence of having a boyfriend. Stuck at home for her sins, Orme picked up the guitar, and a beautiful new relationship was born. But the “constant conflicts” forced her to escape, where she bounced between foster homes, couches and the YMCA. As the track ‘Smuggler’s Adventure’ makes clear, Heartworms always had to return to her family’s house.
Since her mother suffered a stroke a few years ago, Orme checks on her regularly. Still, the musician has never had a “proper relationship” with her. Though she now considers her partner’s parents as her own, “there’s always going to be that gaping hole”. “It’s always played into my mind and creativity,” she professes. “It’s something that I’ve always held onto and will never stop thinking about it.”
Credit: Jamie Waters for NME
Does Heartworms think she needs conflict to go through life? “I think I do, to be very honest with you,” she admits. “I’m so used to it growing up. My mum and I, it’s constant conflicts and walking on eggshells. It brought out a lot of creativity and escape.” What impact has the estrangement has had on her? “Definitely a lot more positive and negative,” she says. “I guess you can go down the wrong avenue. I’ve had many opportunities to do that, but I didn’t.”
And why not? She pauses. “There was just something inside me that knew you have to do this, and you’ve got to do it,” she says, seemingly recalling those early days trying to make it as a musician. “‘Don’t go down there.’ I had no money, I had nothing. If I’m going to make this work, I’ve got to do it.”
Heartworms has come far since those tumultuous days, but it’s undeniably changed her for better or worse. She recalls her near-disastrous opening slot for St. Vincent last June. Technical difficulties caused her to angrily throw her cap on the floor – and proceed to give an unusually impassioned performance: “People saw the change in my face and the way I was moving, but I’m so glad it happened because [otherwise] it wouldn’t have been such a great show.”
“Heartworms is a way I can be accepted”
Would Heartworms say she’s an emotional person? “I would say I am; it is what it is,” she shrugs. “I could cry at the smallest things, but when you yearn for motherly love, you’re a lot more prone to being affected by things you see around you in the world. I wish I wasn’t too emotional, though. I feel like I do give away a lot. At the same time, the music wouldn’t have as much power as it does. I want people to understand that it’s fine to just be honest about how you feel.”
It’s ironic, isn’t it? We have endless TV shows, infographics and TikToks representing the struggles of navigating trauma. Reality, however, makes less room for such discussions – especially for those as candid as Heartworms’. “I’ve had conversations with many people who were like, ‘You need help’,” she shares. “But I’ve always had a freedom within myself to talk about whatever’s on my mind, even when people obviously thought, ‘What the hell did you just say to me?’”
Music, then, is a sacred space for Heartworms; a place outside the boundaries of everyday life, where she is free to acknowledge the darkness just as she likes.
“My music is the only way I can portray it and not be as judged as you would be in real life,” she says firmly. “Heartworms is a way I can be accepted.”
Heartworms’ ‘Glutton For Punishment’ is released on February 7 via Speedy Wunderground.
Listen to Heartworms’ exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Alex Rigotti
Photography: Jamie Waters
Label: Speedy Wunderground
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