In the Victoria backroom in Dalston, the crowd is wearing neon nerd glasses (just the frames, of course) and paper moustaches on sticks are being sported like nobody’s business. The mood has been decidedly set for the debut album we’re getting ready to welcome: Coupdekat’s Goodbye 2012! is being released on August 7. It’s the grimy-girlhood pop of your grottiest fever dreams. Imagine a soundtrack to your teenage Facebook and Instagram archives, but every possible setting on the soundboard has been cranked up to the absolute maximum. It’s cringecore metamorphosing into a new-age reimagining of our most vulnerable yet carefree years, but this time as something to embrace.
Kat’s headlining tonight, and it’s something special; she performed here a year ago to the day, with the since-disbanded collective CLUB GUNK. This nostalgic tidbit is delivered with wistful excitement; no matter who she misses, it is Coupdekat’s night tonight.
I’m fighting her fans for her attention as we sit down at a table. She has to nonchalantly wave them away, “Later,” she mouths, pointing at me. I need to lock in so I’m not stealing her away for any longer than necessary. I’m sure she has pre-performance rituals to get up to – actually, what are they?: “Chew lots of gum for a loose jaw, drink some tea. Some deep breaths, and try not to speak too much for vocal rest.” Ah, fuck. It’s only the start of the interview, too. She laughs at this and assures me we have enough time. Alright. Let’s dive into the lore and the lair of Coupdekat.
Throwbacks are more topical than ever right now – recently there was the trend of “share a pic of yourself from 2016” on Instagram – and the album title coincides with this movement. However, 2012 was chosen with intent; it was the last year of Kat’s childhood. “That was the year before I got my period. It’s the preteen feeling, the idea of innocence, girlhood. After that it was an emotional rollercoaster and everything massively switched up.” Reminiscing visually was further driving force that led to the album name: “When I look back at photos I collected, sent, uploaded, received, it felt right to have that as the year. There was lots that I felt nostalgic about and parts that I missed about myself. It felt like a beautiful year.”
There is a stark contrast between the neon-rose-tinted glasses era of social media that is Gen Z’s early 2010s childhood and the social media that we know today, where everything is curated to the heavens. Kat researched the last decade that we have loved and lost, and found it to be visually very interesting, a maximalist time in pop culture. She craves the expressive freedom and how there were simply less fucks to give when wearing zebra print and all the colours.
“Social media right now is very lacking in life, personality, and customisation. I want the feeling of the early internet where you did not have to adhere to the given template,” she says. She describes early photos as a “back-catalogue of our lives”, and how it’s easy to look back and think, “Ugh, I wish I was that carefree.”
I asked her if nostalgia is a grass-is-greener situation. “When you’re worried about the future for the world in general, lots of scary things going on right now, political unrest, it is nice to look back on what was a more innocent, sweet time on the internet.” Particularly striking and relatable is her strong desire for not caring about how she presents herself on the internet, like when she was younger, while simultaneously balancing the act of looking carefree. Thus, the album is a comforting time-capsule, softly padded with youthful carelessness, but cut from all the jagged edges of not being allowed to stay naïve.
Goodbye 2012! was written on August 20, 2025, her first day in New York (wow! good memory), and the whole album ended up being written there. I asked her how we can feel and hear the city in her music, if she’d perhaps sampled some footsteps of rats running or something. This got her excited. “Subway sounds in [TRACK 7]. Arcade sounds in [TRACK 9]. Me and my producer walked around with a field mic and kept it going. Times Square, Chinatown, Bushwick, we got loads of fun, weird stuff.” It’s truly an immersive experience.
Coupdekat is a lover of tangibility, of “music that’s made of real things. I love the idea that you can make a whole drum kit from objects, pens, nails” – as seen in her music video for one of the singles, ‘kisses’. “Also, it’s so original this way because you’re never gonna find that specific sound on Splice.” It’s true – if you use your own fingernails, no-one else can rip that off you and make a beat out of it – unless it turns real gruesome. Either way, it would make you think, and that is Kat’s primary goal for this album: to make you wonder if it’s “too loud, too abrasive, or too much, overdriven to the max.” There is a sentiment of current pop music being over-sterile and lacking in stimulation. This is why Goodbye 2012!, true to the singer’s punk roots, feels like the grit built up from a night out dancing. “Dirty, unfinished, raw. Feeling like it was mixed in the 2000s by a DIY band. It was important for it to sound that way.”
Finishing off the interview with a sprinkle of optimism, she describes the internet as such: dreamlike, imaginary, and in the palm of her hand. Well, we were certainly eating out of it at her performance that night. Her energy was reminiscent of an early Lily Allen, if Lily Allen had been influenced by Bassvictim, MIA, Basement Jaxx and Oklou. The lighting was synth-synced, and so were our dancing shoes. There was a moment of tenderness after one of the songs, and that’s just what happens when you pour as much of yourself into your craft as Coupdekat does; it ends up flowing out of your eye-sockets. Then, the eponymous Jonny showed up right as we were chanting “ONE MORE SONG!”, so we were treated to an encore of ‘When Jonny Calls’ while the namesake himself danced with the stars on stage. Two people, right at the front in the left corner, knew all the words to all her songs. I assumed they were her friends. Turns out I met Coupdekat’s superfans. Soon, the stadium will be packed full of them.
Coupdekat’s debut album Goodbye 2012! is out today, August 7, 2026.
