The five-track Kat Leigh EP was produced by Erik Ron (Panic! At the Disco, Set It Off, Godsmack). Musically, Kat’s influences span genres ranging from Tyler the Creator to Avril Lavigne to Amy Winehouse. Lyrically, Kat boldly channels uncomfortable topics and underrepresented experiences. Their lyrics are autobiographical and focus on what makes Kat, Kat. On their debut EP, Kat explores their mother’s illness and the emotional fallout which surrounded it, their parent’s divorce, sexual harassment, and gender identity through poignant and relatable lyrics.

The 21-year-old singer-songwriter has an insatiable desire to create things as an outlet and express themselves helped them keep their head on straight through all the rough patches of life. They used the pandemic lockdown as an opportunity to focus on their creativity, writing material for their forthcoming debut EP, filming videos, painting, and taking photos. They also took time to process feelings about their complicated relationship with their biological mother. When Kat was around 8 years old, their parents split, and they lived with their dad and didn’t see their mother too often. 

“For the first 19 years of my life, me and my mom didn’t get along at all,” Katexplains. “She had a lot of resentment and anger toward life understandably. She was diagnosed with lupus before I was born. She had three kidney transplants, stomach ulcers—all sorts of health problems. Now that I’m older I understand why she had so much anger. But as a kid, you don’t understand that anger. I don’t think as an adult you really do either. What she dealt with was unimaginable.”

What inspired your self-titled EP? 

What inspired me to self-title the EP is that the music is all so personal to me. It’s not really thematic in the sense of a specific “vibe” or sound, it’s thematic in the sense of it just being things that happened to me that I felt were profound enough to write about. And there were songs even more personal that I cut from the EP because I felt they kind of showed too much of me too soon if that makes sense. It sounds cheesy but my music is a diary, so it just made sense. 

Biggest source of inspiration outside of music?  

Picking my biggest source of inspiration outside of music is a hard one for me. Music is the only real way I learned to hone in on my emotions so I get the most inspired when I’m sitting on my couch singing karaoke tracks on youtube, listening to what kind of music I sing the best, what I feel the deepest, what’s the most fun or what’s challenging, but besides that I get inspired by all kinds of things. I could hear a sound in a video game and need to put it in a song, or have a moment with my partner that makes me want to write about it. That’s the excitement on inspiration, it’s unpredictable. 

Any funny anecdotes from the time you were recording or writing this? My producer and engineer would have to cut me vaping out of takes, which I’m not proud of but it’s pretty funny. 

What’s your favorite place or environment to write? 

I like to write in my car for whatever reason, I’ve always felt kinda safe and comfortable in my car it’s like my mini home. When I lived with my parents, I’d sit in my car for hours in the driveway just because it was mine

What’s a record that made you want to be a musician? 

Oddly enough, my brother showed me an acapella cover of “More Than a Feeling” by Boston that *NSYNC did when I was like 5 years old, and I wanted to learn how to sing it so bad. And around the same age I had an obsessed with “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day and they were just the greatest things I had ever heard at the time and I just wanted to do it too

Who is an artist or band you look up to today? 

Since Justin Timberlake was my first introduction to music in general thanks to my brother, he’ll always be the artist I hold closest to my heart. I look up to a lot of people, Frank Ocean, Pink Floyd but I’m a JT fan ride or die 

What was the most valuable lesson you learned in the past 2 years with the pandemic? 

That forgiveness is life changing. Had I not forgiven my mom and her forgiven me for how badly we got along when I was young, I wouldn’t have had the beautiful friendship I had with her the last years of her life, and in deciding to do that only made me wish I had that realization sooner. 

Do you have any mentors or people in your life you look up to particularly? 

My brother Kyle is honestly just my hero. He’s 10 years older than me so I was young enough to watch him kind of figure out life before I had to, and it was really hard to watch at times because life isn’t easy and the one we had as a family definitely wasn’t and dealing with it as a 17 year old is obviously going to be much different than a 7 year old. And just how he was able to come out on top of so many obstacles and do nothing but prosper has honestly been an honor to watch. He’s such an incredible person and not to mention he introduced me to what my whole life would revolve around one day.

What does music and art mean to you? 

It means everything to me because I wouldn’t know how else to express myself. There’s so many different types of art that I love and that help me. The art of cooking or painting or film, all help me in different ways and different situations. 

How would you describe your act in one word? 

Multifaceted (hopefully). Since so many different types of art speak to me and help me, I want to participate in them all. I want to write a movie one day, do a stand-up show, design clothes, be a hairstylist or something, I want to try it all. There’s no reason not to