Kelsy Karter is Obsessed with Obsession

In a recording studio deep in the San Fernando Valley, Kelsy Karter is singing a new song about obsession.

The tune is called “Softer,” and, like much of her work, its lyrics are raw and autobiographical. This time, they draw on her recent diagnosis with a form of Obsessive-compulsive disorder known as “Pure O.” Yet Karter is utterly at ease behind the mic, rasping through a wistful melody with an unlit cigarette between her fingers, a black motorcycle jacket slipping off one shoulder. 

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“Sometimes the softest people are the ones that look the hardest, and that’s where that song is,” Karter tells me later. “I really want this next album to touch on all the feelings that I might be uncomfortable talking about. And it’s been so liberating, I tell ya.”

She’s with her band at Studio 606, the Foo Fighters’ headquarters in Northridge, suburban enclave on the northwestern edge of Los Angeles. Dave Grohl and the rest of his band are away on tour, leaving the space to Kelsy Karter & the Heroines as they work on a new album.

Working on the follow-up to last year’s Love Made Me Do It, the quartet is spread around the main room, running through the new song in their layers of denim and black leather. High above drummer Seb Boyse hangs a Motörhead Warpig banner. The band runs on rock and roll, but they’re shaping the new songs with unexpected colors. 

Karter says the new album will take some inspiration and glam from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She promises “great rock songs with big choruses. I think people crave the raw and the authentic more than ever.”

 “The biggest thing we get told is, and it’s annoying sometimes, but I guess it’s a compliment: ‘You sound better live. I wish the record sounded like you do live.’ So, okay, let’s bring more of that spirit into the record.” 

The band landed at Studio 606 through Karter’s close friendship with Foos guitarist Pat Smear. He first became aware of Karter through an alarming 2019 publicity stunt tied to the release of her early single, “Harry,” a mildly unhinged ode to pop superstar Harry Styles. 

On that track, Karter sings: “Harry, I’m gonna make you love me … Yeah, I’m staring at you in the magazines every day / Feel like I’m 17 / Never been touched this way.”

On its release, Karter posted a picture of herself with what appeared to be a tattoo of Styles on her face. It only lasted a day, long enough to generate coverage in Time and People magazines. “We had TMZ following me around and stuff, and I had to hide out in my manager’s office because I didn’t actually have a tattoo,” she recalls. “The question was, ‘Is she really that much of a psycho?’ It was either psycho or genius.”

“I got death threats. Harry fans, they’re intense,” she goes on. “It was like the most exciting experience. I just wanted to do something that was different and wasn’t just like, ‘Here’s my single.’ I’ve always been quite rebellious.”

That media sensation was amusing enough to get Smear out to one of her shows at the Moroccan Lounge in L.A. They soon became friends.

“He’s been like an uncle to me in this town,” she says of Smear, a Los Angeles native first known as a member of seminal local punks the Germs. “He’s just been such a godsend in this city for us.”

Later in the Foos upstairs lounge, Karter sits at a table by the window, adorned in multiple rings and pearls, her long black hair accented with a lock of platinum above her forehead. Scattered on the chairs and couches are throw pillows made from vintage rock T-shirts. The band recorded here for a week, then embarked on a short U.S. tour that closes July 17 with Rock Fest in Wisconsin, before heading across the U.K. After that, they’ll be back at 606.

Planning the album was a logistical challenge, since her bandmates are based in England, while she and their producer live in Los Angeles. Smear offered 606.

“He’s like, ‘I’ve got one condition though: You have to make it sound like you sound live,’” Karter says with a grin. 

Karter was born in New Zealand, which is where her parents met. Her father is from Los Angeles, and, amazingly, went to school with Smear at Venice High. Her family relocated to Australia, and at 17, Kelsy moved on her own to America. That restless impulse surfaces on the piano ballad “Runaway,” from Love Made Me Do It.

“I think I’ve got what my dad has—that nomadic spirit,” she notes of the song. “I never like to stay in one place too long or let anyone get too close, but when I do, it’s like I would die for you.

“My parents are just like the most unique, strong circus freaks themselves. So it taught me to just go out there and be who I want to be and don’t take shit, but be a good person.”

She intended to become an actor and director, and that theatrical instinct remains. “I was always told that I had a good voice and I didn’t believe it ever. I played instruments and my dad’s side of the family were jazz musicians, so I was immersed in music my whole life, but it wasn’t my dream.”

Even so, her love of melody pulled her toward music, and many people encouraged her to take a path similar to an especially famous British pop siren with a ’60s beehive. “People were like, ‘Oh, little white Jewish girl with tattoos with a jazzy voice. Let’s make her Amy Winehouse.’

“But rock and roll was always something that I felt connected to spirit-wise,” she notes. “So I pressed reset and started making rock music and then started a band.”

Her fiancé is Adam Slack, lead guitarist for the Struts. (The last album closes with “Superdream,” her romantic lullaby for the musician.) Their relationship led Karter to the musicians who became her band.

Slack’s cousin and guitar tech Tommy Gent became Karter’s bassist. She met Boyse backstage at Nottingham’s Rock City, and first played with guitarist Matt Peach when he unexpectedly joined her at an English open mic night. After Karter and her original guitarist had a falling out, she called in Peach. “I was like, ‘If you let me dress you, will you come and play this tour with me?’” she remembers. “And he was like, ‘Fuck yeah.’”

At the time, Peach’s look was more farmer than urban rocker. “He fully dresses himself now,” she reports. “He just needed a woman’s touch.”

The musicians will be in her wedding next year. “They’re all bridesmen,” she says. 

“We’re proper best mates and they’re all so unique. They’re all so Spinal Tap, it’s ridiculous. I’m probably not excused from that, but we all have our own thing going on and we all embrace each other’s oddities and everyone is their own person.” 

The Heroines’ cover of Heart’s “Alone” got the attention of Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens, who posted online about it. Karter sent him a note of thanks, and three months later the band were booked to open Idol’s tour. Within a few shows, Stevens started joining them onstage for the song. (Stevens later contributed a guitar solo on the current album’s “Painkillers.”)

Kelsy Karter & the Heroines release a cover single every year, leading to fiery takes on Blondie’s “Call Me” and Aerosmith’s “Cryin’.” Karter and Peach did an acoustic version of Bonnie Tyler’s gritty 1985 hit “Holding Out For A Hero,” which led to invitations to be part of stage shows in the West End, her theater kid dreams satisfied at last.

“I tell artists that ask me for advice: Never shy away from a cover because it has given me a role in a West End show. It’s given me a Billy Idol tour,” she says. “Just honor the people you love, honor the songs you love. Play the music.” 

On the album cover of Love Made Me Do It is an image of two Kelsy Karters, one in black leather, the other naked except for her line tattoos. In the picture, photographed by Whitney Otte, the two versions of Karter are about to kiss. 

“I have this leather-wearing cigarette-smoking, knife-carrying exterior and demeanor. Although those are all a true part of me—my dad gave me a knife when I was 12 and taught me how to use it—it’s not the complete me. 

“It was through embracing the sensitive, vulnerable part of me that unlocked who I wanted to be as an artist. I was like, you can be both. You can be hard and soft, tough and vulnerable, masculine and feminine, all at once.” 

Karter has seen some fans show their appreciation with a familiar mark of devotion: tattoos. One recurring image is from her first album cover, depicting her smiling face as blood drips down her forehead.

So far, none have repeated Karter’s personal history as a Harry Styles fanatic with ink. “Oh no,” she says with a laugh, “not on their face, thank God.”

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

In a recording studio deep in the San Fernando Valley, Kelsy Karter is singing a new song about obsession. The tune is called “Softer,” and, like much of her work, its lyrics are raw and autobiographical. This time, they draw on her recent diagnosis with a form of Obsessive-compulsive disorder known as “Pure O.” Yet […]Steve Appleford{authorlink}https://www.spinmagazine.com/feed/SPINMusic News, Album Reviews, Concert Photos, Videos and Morehttps://static.spinmagazine.com/files/2023/08/cropped-logo-spin-s-340×340.png