With her latest EP Leaving Is The Kindest Thing soon to be released, Kat Edwards recounts her therapeutic songwriting process and the tender experiences behind her lyrics.
With her blonde hair tied into plaits, Kat Edwards sits at her dining room table, sun streaming in from the window behind her. She has a thoughtful, pensive way of speaking, something that reflects the introspective and earnest tone of her songwriting.
25-year-old Kat Edwards’s songs are a resonant blend of ethereal vocals and intimate lyrics. As a Melbourne-based indie-pop artist well established within the scene, Kat now finds herself weeks away from releasing her third studio EP, Leaving Is The Kindest Thing, which she’ll tour across Australia in early November.
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To the outside world, it seems like Kat Edwards has been thrown into the music scene somewhat abruptly. With her gaining recognition for her EP Sunk in 2021, this year she’s had a dizzying rise to the public eye. In 2024 she supported acts like Conan Gray, Dodie and Clinton Cane.
However, Kat has been ready for these grand moments, as she comes up to her 10th year in the industry.
“To me, it feels like I was waiting for these moments to happen, and hoping they would happen,” she explains. “I felt ready to step up a little bit and to have these experiences… and I feel really lucky that I’m given these opportunities. But I think I felt really ready for them at the same time.”
Growing up in Tasmania, Kat had been without a phone for the majority of her childhood and her main introduction to music was exclusively from CDs.
Her first music inspirations consisted of classics like Elton John, ABBA and Fleetwood Mac. As she got older she was introduced to Radiohead and Margaret Glasby, who she listened to non-stop in her late teens. “She was really good on guitar, and I think that’s what made me want to be really good at guitar,” Kat laughs.
More recently, she’s been listening to a lot of Holly Humberstone and Phoebe Bridgers, who both heavily inspired her latest EP. “I loved the way Phoebe wrote songs and I thought she would always put really cool, interesting lyrics in there that were quite quirky, so I definitely wanted to use a bit of that.”
With constant introduction to new inspirations, Kat sees her music style morphing and changing. “At the moment I’m making new music…stuff that’s not gonna come out for a year that’s very Lizzie McAlpine, Alex G, Holly Humberstone inspired,” she explains.
“Just getting a bit darker and not as anthemic. My songs have this slow start and build up to a big ending and then there’s this big catharsis. The newer stuff I’ve been doing, I’ve definitely just been enjoying writing stuff that kinda chugs along. While I’m writing some of the best lyrics I’ve ever written, I feel like the energy of the newer stuff [is suitable to] put on while you’re cooking or walking down the street. It doesn’t have to be such a moment.”
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Kat describes her latest EP as “cathartic, a little bit coming of age, and truthful.” This can be vividly observed in her latest single, Damaged Goods.
“I started writing Damaged Goods when I was moved out of home for the first time when I lived in Tasmania. The house we moved into had a piano in it, just sitting there in the rental and they weren’t getting rid of it. I was like, ‘That’s cool, I’ll just play it while I live here’”, she tells me.
“It was just really magical. Pianos have such a beautiful energy in them that you don’t get from other instruments.”
At the time, she was going through a bad break-up. “I’d been with this person for three years, so it was my first big partnership as a young adult. I was just writing about the breakdown of that and there was a lot of self-reflection in that period too because as breakups do, they make you look at yourself and your own issues.”
Kat brought a half-written version of Damaged Goods to Dylan Nash (who she worked with on her Leaving Is The Kindest Thing EP) and “turned it into this big emotional release”.
“It’s really hard to listen to and it’s really hard to sing live,” she reflects. “I just feel so sad for past Kat.” She describes how her creative process with Nash is based first and foremost on a strong friendship. From there, the ability to be honest and clear about your creative vision comes easy.
“I guess when you trust someone and when you’re friends with them, it all happens really naturally. Maybe with other producers that I’m not super good friends with, I wouldn’t be as cutthroat. But I feel safe with Dylan to be like ‘I don’t like that idea’ or ‘How about we do this instead?’
“So we get into this really nice flow state when we’re together, which is really special and doesn’t happen often.”
Kat titled Leaving Is The Kindest Thing with a lyric plucked from the chorus of Damaged Goods. Originally, the EP was supposed to be called ‘damaged goods’, but she tells me she felt those words didn’t represent the collection as well as she wanted.
“I’m trying to think a little bit more about the artistic vision lately rather than just making good music and putting it out. I kinda want to look at it as a whole. So we started thinking about other titles we could do and Leaving Is The Kindest Thing just made sense. I guess because the whole EP is about letting things go, the kindest thing to do sometimes is leaving someone, or leaving a part of your life behind.”
“It kind of encapsulated the EP better than ‘damaged goods’ because I didn’t want it to just be like ‘I’m the problem’ or ‘There’s something wrong with me.’ I didn’t think that’s what it was about.”
Kat said in an interview with Triple J that in regards to musicians like Phoebe Bridgers “It feels like you shouldn’t be hearing those lyrics. As though it’s almost from a diary”. She describes her music the same way.
“Sometimes when I get on stage and start singing some of the songs, I start getting so emotional again because it’s like ‘Woah, this is so personal and I’m just singing it to people’. I think as I get older, I’m getting way better at being more honest with myself, so then that comes out with the songwriting.”
Her lyrics are exposed and sincere, created from painful, lived experiences. In her single Childish, she sings about being conflicted in a relationship: “Confusing comfortability for love and just fucking with my feelings”.
There’s no avoiding being vulnerable, especially when it comes to performing live. Opening your heart to 9000 people, as she did on tour with Conan Gray, is no easy feat – but that’s Kat’s job.
“It’s very therapeutic in that way. I guess it almost does feel like I’m my own therapist. Like I’m guiding myself to get these feelings and thoughts out that I would never say to a person but for some reason, if it’s in a song it’s okay. It gets hard when you start performing.”
Leaving Is The Hardest Thing will be released on 20 September. Keep up with Kat Edwards here.
