We Talked To Kitten's Chloe Chaidez

Kitten is a young band, but these kids aren’t your typical high schoolers playing really bad Blink 182 covers in their parents' finished basement; these cats (no pun intended) are for real. The brainchild of multi-talented Chloe Chaidez, Kitten offers up a dynamic take on the powerful and unique blend of loud guitars (see “G#”) and warm electronics. Although Chaidez is only 17, she is a pro, and her vocal delivery on Cut It Out is a truly inspired one.

I chatted with Chloe about Kitten, her dad and making videos….

I understand Kitten isn’t your first rodeo, how’d you get started in music?
As silly as it sounds, I had a band when I was ten. I played bass and we just started out playing covers. We would do David Bowie covers and really stupid shit like Guns N’ Roses. We would also cover bands like Midlake and Sigur Rós, so we had this really eclectic mix. We would send ourselves doing covers for, like, a Midlake song and Midlake would then ask us to come open for them in LA! We got some pretty cool shows that way. It was as simple as sending these bands our covers on Myspace back in the day. Around 13 or 14, I started to grow out of it and started writing a lot and branching out musically. That’s when I started writing for what would become Kitten.

Wait, so you were opening for bands that you were covering when you were ten?
[Laughs] Yeah, that was more when I was about 2, but yeah.

And you’re 17 now?
Yeah.

What’s it like being 17 and having an awesome EP out that is already gaining so much momentum?
It’s really cool. I think when I started this, I knew that I wanted to have longevity and I wanted to tour and develop like any other band would, even though I was a young girl. I’ve been doing it for a long time, so it’s not like all of the sudden I put up this music and people are reviewing it or whatever. I think it’s been a long time coming. We’re still growing and I’m still on the way to the place where I want to be. I just have a goal and I’m trying to reach it, so being 17 doesn’t really cross my mind.

I heard that your dad is a musician. Did that have any influence on you choosing to do music? Usually 14-year-olds hate everything their parents do.
Yeah, he was in an East LA band called the Undertakers. They played with bands like X and the Germs, but he is just a fan of all music. I was gymnast and when he used to drive me an hour and half everyday to my gym, we would listen to music and he would tell me to sing the parts off of this CMJ compilation we had. He definitely was a huge influence on me; he taught me to play bass, plug in pedals, and really helped my band with shows and stuff. He’s not really into electronic music, so when I started Kitten and using Ableton and things like that, he wasn’t that into it. I think that was my way of kind of rebelling.

So you’re the primary songwriter in Kitten, but the instrumentation on the EP really stands out. How did you find your band? Did they just record the EP or do they tour as well?
Yeah, a guy Nick plays a lot of the keyboards, and we kind of mix it in with our live set because we didn’t have a keyboardist for a while and Nick didn’t want to tour. We finally found a guy named Bryan DeLeon and he’s been with us for a year and a half and we have been working with him. He’s just really awesome. Our guitar players are really great as well. It’s really cool, because we have a lot of similar tastes and can agree on what the vision of the record is.

What have you guys been listening too lately?
Personally, I've been more heavily into 80s music. I think sometimes my band thinks I’m weird. I really like Pet Shop Boys, New Order Joy Division, OMD, even ‘Til Tuesday and The Motels, stuff like that. I do think that we can all agree on M83; they’re a band that we all really love, even though they aren’t late 70s and 80s. They are into more ethereal, ambient jammy music, for lack of a better term. Explosions in the Sky and things like that. I think we incorporate a lot of that into our live show, and we are going to put that into our next record as well. I think a lot of the outros and transitions in our live show incorporate a lot of those more ambient elements that they’re heavily influenced by.

When I listened to the EP, your voice stood out in a really awesome and familiar way, which is funny that you cite those influences because they’re so different. Do they also serve as influence for you vocally?
I think I really admire vocalists who kind of just get into a character with their voices, which is why I really admire a lot of 80s singers. They weren’t all trying to sound like Wayne Coyne or anything, they were just singers with really high technical abilities, so I appreciate that. Whether or not I apply this all the time, I really like the quirkiness in certain singers voices, which is why I love Ian Curtis. I also like the depth of Annie Lennox; I think she’s a huge influence on me.

What was the process of writing this EP? Was it any different than past recording experiences?
I started getting a lot more into electronic music, making beats in Ableton, and using vocal samples, which I was really excited about at first. A lot of that has influenced this new music. Also, playing and touring with the band, we discovered new things about ourselves and new parts of our sound that we hadn’t really tapped into yet. The chemistry that we developed musically on the road kind of bled into what we recorded, which is how I think it should be. Now that we’re growing even more, it’s like, oh shit, I wish we could have recorded this or that differently. I think that all of those things kind of made the EP and influenced it.

One thing that people seem to love about Kitten is the lyrical content. What do you draw from lyrically?
For this EP, I was working a lot with my brother, who taught me a lot of the programming stuff, so he was a big part of the development, which is cool because he would just come into my bedroom and we would work on songs. A lot of the lyrics just attach to the song. You have to make sure they’re in syncopation with everything else, and through that, lyrics just grab on to the emotion of the song. For me, the two are very connected and whatever mood the song is using, the lyrics will also use.

Do you still play music with your brother?
A little bit, but he’s at MIT right now. He’s a little a math kid, which is why I think electronic music was kind of his thing. I don’t really see him too much, but we still share music and songs all the time.

I really love the song “G#” and the video for it is awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about the concept?
A lot of people tend to have their actor friends or whoever they think will play the part, but I’ve noticed that people who aren’t actors are the most natural on camera. Getting all of my friends for the videos I think gives it a more organic feel. We shot “G#” at this place called The Salt and Sea, which is just this abandoned town an hour and a half outside of LA. I really want to leave it up to the viewer to form their opinion on it, but it was supposed to be a little bit post-apocalyptic yet nostalgic with the teen romance aspect. We really wanted to leave it up to the viewer though.

So the kids in the video are your friends?
Yeah, it was pretty short notice, because we were having trouble finding people who embodied youth and I was just like, "Wait, why not just get my friends?" One of the girls who is in it is my best friend—she’s also in the “Cut It Out” video, so I guess she knew the drill. I don’t know, I just tried to pick my cool fucking friends and, thank God, they were available.

Did you guys make a conscious effort to exclude live band shots? I feel like it could have been an easy way out and I thought it was way more cinematic the way you did it.
Yeah exactly, we decided not to. If it doesn’t fit or make sense to have the band performing, I don’t want to shove it in there just so people can see the face. I feel like the mystery and mystique of the musical frontman is kind of gone in that way. I want to try and build something iconic, and I think it’s important to what we do. I definitely don’t want to step over our video just to see me sing a line of the song.

Do you have a favorite song on the EP or are they all like your children?
Musically, I really like “Junk,” which of course is probably the song that people like the least. It was one of the songs that really glued together the sound of the EP. It started as basically an all electronic track, and this idea of blending two styles is something we had never really done, so when it was finished, it was like, woah, we did it.

What do you guys have coming up for live shows?
We played the VICE party a week ago, which was really awesome, and we have some local shows coming up. After that, I think we are are looking for stuff in November, but nothing's set in stone. We are really focusing on the full-length record right now, which is set to be released in February.

Without revealing any secrets, can you tell me a little bit about the new record?
We recorded more songs for the EP, which was going to be a full record, but we released these five songs first and now we’re going to record some more and combine it all into a full-length.

Are the new songs going to be in the style of Cut It Out?
Yeah, that was the idea, but now that I’ve kind of moved past that creatively, I don’t know how much I can stick to it. I think it’s going to be quite different.

Be sure to pick up Kitten's EP "Cut It Out", out now on Atlantic Records.