Interview by Kiz.
In this Katy Steele Undressed interview, she has nothing to hide. Katy has been in Australian music long enough to have seen everything change at least twice. She fronted Little Birdy through their early 2000s rise, built a solo career across two continents, and is now doing something that feels genuinely rare — stripping everything back and releasing music entirely on her own terms. Her new EP Undressed is out this month, and there’s a moment in our conversation where she says, almost offhandedly, “there’s nothing really to hide at this point.” She says it the way you might say it to a friend — like she’s just arrived somewhere after a long drive and is quietly relieved to be there.
That ease is all over the record. Recorded largely in a single day, it’s voice and guitar or piano, nothing else. No layers, no embellishment. Just the songs as they were written.
Katy came to prominence as the frontwoman of Little Birdy, the Perth band whose debut single Beautiful to Me landed in the Triple J Hottest 100 back in 2004. Twenty-one years on, she’s singing it again — but it means something different now. “Back in the day it felt like a proper love song,” she tells me. “Now it’s more of a ditty. More about endearment. The simpler things.” She laughs, then adds that her personal test for whether a song has aged well is whether she can still sing it without wanting to — her words — “throw up in my mouth.” Beautiful to Me passes.
What’s striking about talking to Katy is how much of this record is quietly connected to her father, Rick — a blues musician who spent much of his life playing a big dark acoustic guitar. He passed away last year, and while she doesn’t make a big deal of it, the threads are clearly there. “He was really great at just the voice and the guitar,” she says. “I guess in a lot of ways I’m trying to emulate that. Honour his influence.” The record wasn’t planned as a tribute. But somewhere in the making of it, it became one.
After Little Birdy, Katy moved to New York alone in her late twenties — a period she describes as lonely, without much of a support network. She came back and spent years, by her own admission, too scared to release her own music. “I’m kind of past that now,” she says. “I just want to have lots of artistic output and keep making new things.”
Katy Steele on Undressed, AI and What Comes Next
On AI and where the music industry is heading, she’s thoughtful rather than alarmed. She’s genuinely fine with AI handling the admin side of her working life — the behind-the-scenes load that comes with being an independent artist. And live performance? She’s not worried. “People will always want to see a performer perform.” But the recorded side of things is murkier. She mentions what recently happened to a side project from Hiatus Kaiyote — AI-generated songs appearing on an artist’s streaming profile without their knowledge or consent. “That’s shocking,” she says. “There’s not much I can do about it. All I can do is just keep doing what I’m doing and hope that’s enough.” It’s not resignation exactly. It’s the pragmatism of someone who knows the only thing within their control is the work itself.
And the work is clearly not slowing down. Undressed is Volume 1 — deliberately so. When I ask what Volume 2 might feel like, she doesn’t hesitate. Something with a country lean, she says. Her husband’s low voice. Maybe her brother. Something warmer and more upbeat. “I’ve said it now,” she laughs. “I’ve got to do it.”
She’s touring nationally this month, playing Hobart’s Altar Bar on April 23rd. But the thing I keep coming back to is something she said when I asked what she’d tell young women just starting out in the industry. “Know that your voice and your perspective is valid. Everyone has a place in this world. Your outlook is just as important as anybody else’s.” From someone who has navigated this industry across decades and continents, it lands with real weight.
Katy is playing at Altar Bar 23rd April 2026, doors open at 7pm.
Listen to the full interview with Kiz from Thurdsay Feels.