Inside Filipino Girl Group BINI’s Historic Coachella Debut
Girl group BINI moments before taking the stage at Coachella.
ABS-CBN Music
It’s a blistering 89 degrees in Indio, California, and the eight members of girl group BINI are packed inside a small trailer.
With their team surrounding them, some carrying the flag of the Philippines, the young women are abuzz with nervous excitement. Electropop singer Slayyyter can be heard faintly through the not-so-soundproof walls of the trailer. Outside, a group of longtime fans and curious music lovers at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival await the moment the group takes the Mojave stage.
BINI, sporting intricately beaded blue-turquoise ensembles, begins putting warrior-like gold dresses on top of their outfits thanks to the help of their backup dancers, a group of seven men who traveled with the girl group from the Philippines. For a moment, the chaos is put on hold as they begin a group prayer. “That’s the first time we’ve done something like that, where [our performance director] asked us to repeat after him,” BINI member Aiah, 25, tells me that night, hours after their performance is done.
Related Stories
Movies
She Broke Barriers as a Production CEO in the Middle East. Then She Had to Evacuate the Region
Movies
'Humboldt USA' Explores How Our Relationship With Nature Has Changed Through the Prism of a German Proto-Environmentalist
Aiah and the rest of BINI — Colet, Maloi, Gwen, Stacey, Mikha, Jhoanna and Sheena — look noticeably lighter speaking with me hours after their Coachella debut, which comes a day after the release of their newest EP, Signals.
The young women translate some of their pre-performance mantra for me — ”We’re not alone, we’re together” — were key points of the messaging. “He made us close our eyes so we can really bask in the moment,” Aiah says.
BINI performing at Coachella.
ABS-CBN Music
“That’s actually our favorite part, when our coach speaks to us, because it makes us cry,” Stacey, 22, adds. The rapper has seemingly perfected the festival look, her long pastel pink hair sits neatly under a mesh scarf. The women of BINI have seemingly been fighting back tears all day, even offering their coach a lighthearted warning. “We told him not to make us cry,” says Maloi, 23.
The emotions and the tears are understandable though. BINI, known affectionally in the Philippines as “the nation’s girl group,” has made history with this Coachella set, becoming the first musical act from the Southeast Asian country to perform at the festival. “This is very important to us. Not only to us, but to the whole of the Philippines,” explains Sheena, the youngest in the group at just 21 years old.
It’s a sentiment that’s been expressed several times since I’ve arrived at BINI’s Coachella basecamp. “This means a lot to the girls,” Laurenti “Lauren” Dyogi, the head of Star Magic, BINI’s talent management agency, and its parent company ABS-CBN’s head of TV production tells me when we meet following BINI’s performance. He quickly adds, “It actually means a lot to the entire nation.”
Feeling the weight of an entire country seems like a nerve-racking prospect, but the women of BINI take it in stride. “Of course, there’s a sense of pressure and sense of responsibility, but we take that as a good thing,” Aiah says.
The singer notes that the responsibility helps them train and rehearse harder. “It’s not just something that happens in a couple days, a couple of weeks, but it’s something that’s been years in the making,” she continues. “It’s been since day one, when we were still trainees, that this is something that we have manifested.”
The group — formed through the 2019 idol training series, Star Hunt Academy, where the members of BINI trained for three years — officially debuted in 2021. Their profile has risen over the last six years, becoming one of the biggest artists in the Philippines.
But perhaps BINI’s biggest viral breakthrough came in the form of the 2023 tropical pop single “Pantropiko,” earning the group the status as one of most streamed OPM — or original music from the Philippines, as the young women explain to me — artists. It also helped solidify their global ascent.
“Every time I hear ‘Pantropiko’, I’m very proud to be a Filipino,” Stacey says. “That’s our song. I’m part of that song.”
BINI with their backup dancers, who the group flew in from the Philippines, posing at the Coachella artist compound.
ABS-CBN Music
Mikha, 22, says that they were all on the verge of crying before taking the stage at Coachella because of the love the audience was already showing them. It’s true &mdash