Kate Bollinger

Kate Bollinger

Kate Bollinger is an American indie pop songwriter and singer from Charlottesville, Virginia. She writes and records at home in Richmond, Virginia, and her songs often use a loose, intuitive approach, with guitar progressions leading into fragments of melody and lyrics. Her music is generally described as folk-pop and psych-pop, with a relaxed and understated style that brings together tenderness, small observations and contrasts such as darkness and light, pain and pleasure, and reality and escape.

Recording style and collaboration

Bollinger works collaboratively rather than as a solitary home-recording artist. She makes music videos with friends and records with musicians from her community. A group of players with jazz backgrounds records her early material, and she develops songs with longtime collaborator John Trainum, who also influences her quick writing approach. Guitarist Chris Lewis also works with her on later recordings.

Early releases

Her first EP, I Don’t Wanna Lose, is recorded as live takes in a single day. She later follows it with the 2020 EP A word becomes a sound, which is built out more slowly. These releases establish the conversational, reflective tone of her writing and her interest in songs that can feel open to interpretation rather than fixed in meaning.

Later songs and label work

In 2021, Bollinger releases “Shadows,” an introspective psych-pop song with a surreal video directed by her childhood friend Kia Wassenaar. She then signs to Ghostly International, her first label. On “Yards / Gardens,” written with Trainum and Lewis in a shared storage space, she addresses resistance to change and the feeling of being caught in a period of transition, while the arrangement uses a bright bassline and layered guitar work.

Live activity

Bollinger tours in support of Real Estate and plays dates with Faye Webster. She is also known for fast vocal phrasing, which she says can make some songs difficult to perform live.