Kat Moss Gets Candid About Rise to Fame and Her Artistic Process

Nov 8

Words and Interview by Kaiana Lee

Scowl is one of those bands I came across by chance. I was listening to my ‘Discover Weekly’ sometime ago and “Bloodhound” happened to play. Needless to say my brain exploded. I’m new to the hardcore scene but every band I had heard to this point was male-fronted. Kat Moss taking hardcore and mixing it with her femininity spoke to me in a way none of those other bands had.

The band formed in 2019 in Santa Cruz, California. The band consists of singer Kat Moss, guitarist Malachi Greene, bassist Bailey Lupo, drummer Cole Giulbert, and guitarist Mikey Bifolco. Though their discography is short it packs a major punch in quality that any hardcore fan can recognize.

In April, they released their EP “Psychic Dance Routine” and my love for the band once again exploded. So, when their tour led them to Richmond, Virginia I had no choice but to jump at the opportunity to have a chat with lead vocalist Kat Moss.

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PLEASER: This is your first full headlining tour, how does it feel to finally be in it and what is the best part?

Kat: I felt really excited about the fact that this is a space where I actually get to come into my confidence a little bit. While I love supporting other bands on tour, this is a really fun and new experience for us because we've spent so much time on support tours the last two years. I forgot what it was like to feel like a show was rightfully and respectfully mine if that makes sense. It's really exciting to feel like the show and the performances are kind of the climax of the night and it's been such a fun time. It's just been really fun to be able to pick out the bands we’re playing with specifically and get to hang out with all my friends every night. It's been really good. It's been a great experience.

P: What are the unlikely artists that have influenced your music?

KM: I mean when it came to my singing, my vocal influences was singing and not screaming. I've had influences from Snail Mail, Billie Eilish, Phoebe Bridgers, you know to Kim Gordon, Courtney Love, Gerard Way is a huge one for me. His stage presence is a huge inspiration to me, but that one's pretty obvious. I love everything he's done. I love how expressive he is and theatrical he is but he really straddles the line when it comes down to the theatrical in the conceptual side of things with his performance and with his vocals and with the music in general, you know.

We've talked about it but maybe unexpected to a new listener, you know influences would be like the Stooges. Camera Silens. It's this French boy band and they specifically influenced our song Seeds to Sew with the horns and everything. And so there's kind of like some nitty gritty ones in there.

P: When listening to your music what is your process? How do you go about picking what you like and putting it into your music?

KM: It's so organic when you're listening to music and you connect with it and you get to be creative also. You bring in whether it's conscious or subconscious, those influences. I mean right now I feel really inspired by Missy from Mannequin Pussy’s kind of both fragile and volatile energy. Both lyrically and vocally and I think it's really really inspiring. When they just dropped their new single, I think it's called “I Got Heaven”. I felt really heard as a fan and also as a musician, I felt like “wow like this is so cool. That someone is empowering themselves enough creatively to go to this uncharted territory”, or maybe uncharted for them.

Same with listening, you know, I've been trying to make an effort to expand my taste when it comes to music and I've been listening to some of these more out there compared to the regular pop or punk kind of things that I like to listen to. So I've been trying to check out more like French Jazz, kind of avantguard stuff and make an effort to go down the line of the history of the music. To find stuff that is kind of hidden gems from like the 70s and the 80s and and I wish I had more words to explain it but it is really cool because you realize music is something that is so freeform and there really aren't rules and while theory is a really beautiful thing because it's theory. It's fun to learn about and it's also really cool to see people like successfully break the rules, you know, and I'm very inspired by that.

P: I've always been into emo but recently I started getting into punk and hardcore a little bit more with the DIY scene in Richmond. But, it seems like there are a lot of dudes everywhere all the time. So I think it's really cool to have somebody like you in the scene that makes me feel like “okay, maybe I can actually be in the pit a little bit.” How do you feel about being that safe space for people? And what do you have to say to somebody like me?

KM: I feel so tender about it. I know that we all kind of feel like punk and hardcore and even emo, which is a genre or a scene of music that is kind of centered around the idea of wearing your heart on your sleeve but a lot of people I think are very insecure. We're humans and I think we're afraid of our shame and owning it and I think that being in a room full of white men is something that is really intimidating because of the way our world is. It doesn't stop even though we have rooms full of subculture where everyone is supposedly having the same mindset.

Something that's really important to me is constantly making an effort to take pride in what I do and the way I present myself and the way I speak. So that I am constantly making my younger self feel validated and feel safe because I mean, I think we can all agree like especially as as women, queer people, trans people or non-white people that experience has like a level of fear in it that not everyone understands and it's kind of like you can't put words to it that stuff like makes me emotional, being able to create a space unknowingly that makes people who fall under those categories feel safer to express themselves and to step out of their comfort zone and to embrace their shame right? Because in reality what do we have to be ashamed of? Literally, like what do we have? This culture, like subculture, celebrate diversity and questioning everything and questioning our culture, but when it boils down to it, we still have to do that within ourselves and we have to do that in these rooms.

I just really feel grateful that I could come,participate and add in like a crumb of inspiration or influence on people who feel ashamed of who they are who don't need to. I know what it's like to go onstage and be scared to sing even though I've been doing it for a minute or to be afraid to get in a mosh pit or being afraid to wear this or do that or sing along to a band but in reality that's your room,that space is more for you than like anyone else in that moment.

I hope that one day there's a generation of bands like hardcore punk bands that revolve in the DIY world that nobody goes into that room feeling like “No, I don't know,I don't know if I feel safe.” I do really think like the subculture should always walk the walk.

P: I’ve noticed that Scowl makes its way onto “female-fronted hardcore band” lists. It seems like “female-fronted” is becoming a bit of a genre rather than letting the band speak for itself and I wonder how you feel about that?

KM: That's been an issue for a long time. I feel like in hardcore specifically like that kind of invisible separation of people who don't fall under the category of just being like a dude or like a white dude in a band. I kind of noticed it when I first started coming to shows (not to say that it isn't diverse and it isn't celebrated because it very much is) but there's still these kind of like subconscious blockages and I remember thinking when I first started coming around hardcore shows “why aren't women in bands or bands with women in them or bands with queer people in them or bands that are all black or bands full of BIPOC? Why are they not the ones headlining the hardcore festivals? Why are they always the ones opening the shows? Why are they always the ones that are getting the most criticism?” You know, I always felt like that was kind of wrong. I mean it is, you know, but not everyone is willing to take off the blinders and recognize that.

I guess at the source of it, It's like female-fronted hardcore, that phrase, it can be incredibly corralling. Where it's like “Oh, no, you're only this you can't branch out. You can't go further past this, you only belong here.” But it's like I don't feel like I only belong there. Of course I want to celebrate the women around me who are being creative because those are my fucking bitches. I love them. You know, hat's more important to me than any band that's just a bunch of dudes, but that's because I feel represented and I feel safer in that space. I feel more comfortable in that space.

P: Scowl has really skyrocketed in the last few years. With new fame comes a lot of talk. With all the chatter how do you handle it and does it affect your music at all?

KM: Totally. I'm a spiteful person. I feel corny pointing this out, but I specifically incorporate certain lyrics repeatedly, the lyrics like “at will” and “in spite.” “At my own fucking will I'll do whatever I want in fucking spite” either in spite of a singular person, in spite of myself and my doubts, in spite of a system, whatever it may be.

I get angry. I get emotionally affected sometimes. I think I would be lying if I said I was above being emotional but I think that's human and when you're consumed and perceived by a lot of people nobody really prepares you for that and like how vulnerable that feels and how scary that can be at times. It totally affects me. It totally pisses me off sometimes but at the end of the day, I've learned to get my footing. I used to be a lot more sensitive and now I'm not nearly as sensitive and I recognize that the people that matter to me are in that room with us dancing and singing along and being touched however, it may be. The people that matter are not going to be the people who are sitting at home running their mouths like that. That just doesn't matter. So I learned to self- soothe.

P: Is there something you wish I asked you or just something you want to say?

KM: I really like when people ask these kinds of questions that you're asking. Like, “how does it make you feel to go through this experience?” You know, it feels really genuine and I feel like I don't really get time to connect with the people that are interested in hearing what I have to say and the fact that there are people interested in hearing what I have to say to begin with is totally shocking. But I really appreciate when I'm asked about how I feel and about my experience because those people who I don't get to connect with all the time, if they get to read it that means so much to them and I only say that because of my own experience. I'm a fan at heart of music and of artists and so when I get to read an interview from an artist thatI like and they get to be vulnerable and they get to talk about their true feelings beyond just lyrics or melodies or you know songs. It means a lot to me because I feel closer to them and maybe that's kind of fucked up in a parasocial relationship way but I feel seen, yeah, it's nice to be asked about how I feel.