If Billie Eilish and Kali Uchis were to have a love child, Cat and Calmell would be the end result. Dropping their impressive debut EP “Life of Mine” this month, the duo invite us into their woozy pop world, filled with nostalgic rhythms and relationship drama. Touching on everything from the environmental crisis to teenage angst, the duo easily navigate through a variety of contemporary pop productions, guiding us through using powerful lyricism and synth-laden vocals.

“This EP is so special to us because it’s been such a long time coming,” the duo revealed. “It encapsulates a time in our lives that was full of a lot of excitement but also a lot of uncertainty, it’s such a time stamp of our slightly younger and slightly more reckless days. A lot of the songs on this EP were written nearly two years ago and it’s so nice to see where we were and where we came from both in terms of our music and our headspace back then, so please enjoy our first ever little baby, ‘Life of Mine’.”

Newcomers to the game, the duo only made their impressive entrance onto the scene last year, with their powerhouse single “dumbshit” propelling them into the spotlight. Due to perform at virtual festival Splendour XR next month, we caught up with the duo talking all things music and their hometown Sydney.

Check out the interview below…

Hey Cat and Calmell! We are halfway through 2021, how has this year been for you so far?
This year has been super exciting, we’ve already hit a few milestones like performing our very first live show We hit our first million streams and of course released our first EP.

With everything that happened last year, do you think your creativity was affected?
We had to adapt to these new circumstances quite quickly but I think being of the social media and technology generation it wasn’t too hard of a switch for us, on the creative side it’s definitely been challenging but after a couple of zoom sessions with producers we found our groove and being able to wear pyjama bottoms while you’re at ‘work’ is always a plus.

How did you guys meet? What sparked the interest?
We met at an afterschool singing/dance training place where we were mortal enemies, but after a shared laughing fit and asthma attack we created a soul bond. We became inseparable and co-dependent ever since and doing music together was just a no-brainer.

You’re both from Sydney, do you think growing up here impacted your sound?
Calmell was born and raised in Sydney whilst Cat was born here but moved to China at the age of 2, so we had pretty different upbringings in that sense but we were both living out our mini diva fantasies on the opposite end of the globe.

And you’ve just dropped your debut EP “Life of Mine” talk us through the production process?
We worked with some amazing producers building this project (Hauskey, Alex Wildwood & Taka Perry). We aren’t well versed in the production aspect of things, so our process when creating our music involves a lot of mouth sounds and non-verbal communication, and it’s just up to our producers to interpret what we’re trying to convey.

It touches on relationship drama, environmental crisis and being young, what was your mindset going into the project?
We never had a set vision or concept going into this project. These songs were written at a time when we were still exploring who we were both stylistically as artists and as people. The subject matter is simply a reflection of the things that were on our minds at the time. We were just trying to use music as an avenue to explore the things that were going on in our personal lives and also just to use it as free therapy and force our producers to listen to our problems because we’re horrible and like to overshare.

What do you want people to take away from your sound? How would you describe it?
As artists and young women, we are constantly evolving and learning. We hope that our lovely supporters listen with an open mind and grow with us. As cliche as this sounds, we know how isolating it feels to struggle with your mental health and deal with issues on a societal level and feel hopeless and we hope we can give you some sort of comfort through our music

Who would you cite as your inspirations?
Dwight Shrute, April Ludgate and The Winx Club – the animated version.

What’s next for you? What are you most excited for?
We’ve got a mini-tour around Australia coming up as well as a few festivals including Splendour XR which we’re super excited for!