Features Kate Boy: ‘We Love Mixing Opposite Worlds’

It’s been two years since they formed and Kate Boy are still a relatively mysterious entity to some.

Vocalist Kate Akhurst is from Australia, while the rest of the band are from Sweden. Together, they latch onto a Scandi-pop sound - all dark, punching synths and jolting rhythms - but not in the conventional sense. Despite not having an ‘I Love It’ in their locker (yet), Kate Boy are aiming for the charts the do-it-yourself way. This involves a) taking time, b) not saying yes to everything and most crucially c) having complete control of everything. Their DIY-or-die approach takes some beating. Given freedom in all areas, they’ve landed with a colossal sound, encountered by very few fellow Scandinavia-based new hopes. The mystery stems from just how they manage to pull it all off.



You produce all your own songs, all your own videos. Why is it that pop music isn’t associated with a DIY approach? Do you feel like you’re bringing something new?
We love the DIY approach. We feel like nowadays it’s quite possible to do a lot of the creation yourself and feel like many new artists are doing that. It’s the best way for us because that way our vision can be executed exactly how we see it, it’s clearer and more focused. We are definitely going to collaborate in the future with others but while we have so many ideas in our minds we want to try to make them happen as easily as possible. Usually that’s by doing it ourselves.

You’ve spent most of 2013 playing shows and festivals - how much of an itch did you have to get into a studio and record this album?
An enormous itch! We loved playing all the shows and festivals this year, it’s been a phenomenal experience for us.

It’s so inspirational meeting people from all around the world, as well as entering new territory for us as a live band has inspired a new way of thinking when it comes to our songwriting. We’ve been so excited to get back into the studio to finish our album and put all of our new ideas and experiences into our music.

How’s it shaping up? Are any new songs dramatically different from say, the first song you wrote, ‘Northern Lights?’ How have you developed as a band since you first started working together?
We love this part of the process; being able to stretch out our imaginations to cover the spectrum of sounds which we love. Some of it will have the essence of our bones which is ‘Northern Lights’ but there will also be a deeper, darker and a more ambient side to us that we’re exploring. We love contrast and mixing opposite worlds to create something new and inspiring. We hope that our album will be that mix of worlds which brought us all together in the first place. Even though 2 years have now passed since we first started working together, our development still feels like a very organic and naturally evolving thing, we don’t even realize that it’s happening, we just realize that we’re stronger with age, like our tree is growing a wider trunk every day.



Taken from the new, free Futurepop issue of DIY Weekly, available to read online or to download on iPad now.