Hind

Hind Laroussi Tahiri was born on December 3, 1984 in Gouda in the Netherlands. She has a Moroccan father and a Dutch mother.

When Hind was eight years she sang and acted in public for the first time. Shortly thereafter she started taking singing lessons. At her high school she performed in numerous music shows. Her talent did not go unnoticed; she received an invitation to sing during the TMF dancemasters party of the year in Germany. All this resulted in a role in Tracks, a contemporary theatre group. Singing, dancing and cabaret lessons followed. At national level Hind came to the fore when she participated in the Soundmixshow 2002, and took part in the finals, where she imitated Vanessa Williams. Hind also took part in the first edition of the talent show Idols in 2003, finishing in third place.

Hind, who sings R&B, pop and fado, is not afraid of experimenting with different musical styles in different languages such as Arabic and Portuguese. One of her ambitions is to star in a major role in a musical. While her Idols colleagues Jim and Jamai Loman stormed the charts with their singles, Hind kept quiet, preparing her debut album Around the World. The first single, Summer All Over Again was released in September 2003 and became a success. The subsequent singles Weak and Sure As were not as successful. In 2004 the singer received an Edison for her debut album and on October 25 of the same year she sang the song A Felicidade at a concert by Danny Malando in Tuschinski. In September 2005, her second album came out, Halfway Home. The first single Give Me A Sign was a moderate success, but the singles that followed (Halfway Home and Habaytek Besaif) weren't as successful. Recently it was announced that Hind's deal with record label SONY & BMG had ceased, apparently due to poor sales. Hind has, however, found a new record label to accommodate her music: PIAS


Hind participated in the first edition of the Dutch Idols in the season 2002–2003, where she reached the finals, finishing in third place.

Her debut album Around The World (2003) contains pop and R&B songs, but is also influenced by Portuguese and Arabic music. The album sold over 40,000 copies.

In 2004, she received an Edison award for Best New Dutch Artist. In 2005, Hind released her second album Halfway Home, which she herself called "Arabpop" due to the Arabic influences in several of the songs. The single "Habbaytek Besaif" (2006) is a Fairuz cover.

Hind represented the Netherlands in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 in Serbia with the song "Your Heart Belongs to Me". However, she failed to make it past the semi-final stage.