- 2025-11-29
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MUSIC
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Cat & Calmell Drops New Music Video for “Rot” from New Mixtape “LIVE LAUGH COOL STAR”
Sydney-based alt-pop duo Cat & Calmell, consisting of Catherine Stratton and Calmell Teagle, dropped a new music video for “Rot” directed by Charles Buxton-Leslie and Kyle Caulfield on November 28, 2025.
The song is featured on their new mixtape “LIVE LAUGH COOL STAR”, which was released on the same day.
For the duo, the track is the earliest written, but longest to finish song on the mixtape.
It was written by Calmell Teagle, Catherine Stratton, and Lucy Blomkamp, who also produced the track.
Catherine Stratton said of the song, “I had actually put together a rough treatment when we first started writing the song over a year ago and had honestly forgotten about it. So it was super cool to revisit and be like 'wow, I actually still really like this'.”- She said of the video, “A lot of the initial ideas sparked from this April 2014 Vogue Italia shoot I randomly stumbled upon and the concept snowballed from there. When we got Charles (director extraordinaire) on board, I told him 'think Scary Movie but less cheesy slapstick and more aesthetic horror spoof' and he got it straight away.”
Calmell Teagle continued, “We've been super hands on with all the videos in this roll out, but because Charles lives in Melbourne, we kinda had to let go of the reigns and just trust that everything would come together. The shooting process was such a breeze, it was the most fun, stress free experience we've had so far. We just got to run around in our gory makeup, screaming and thrashing about. Although, the next day we both woke up stiff as a board hahaha, our bodies were ACHING. So worth it though.” -
The mixtape comprises 6 tracks featuring a guest appearance from Cult Shφtta, produced by Lucy Blomkamp and Harry Charles.
It is their first project in two years since the 2023 mini-album “How Do You Feel?”
The duo said of the mixtape, “LLCS is a collection of songs we wrote sporadically over the course of our unofficial hiatus. Truthfully, writing this project was the first time we felt like we found a way to talk about the things we always talk about (the hard shit), in a way that felt true to how we live through it - under layers and layers of inside jokes and irony, through dancing and friendship and crashing out and never taking anything at all seriously. It feels surreal to be able to let you guys back into our world, and we hope this mixtape makes you feel like having FUN, because we’ve never had more fun than finding ourselves again through this project.”
Photo by @sniper.ash @genius111001019020 - source : Apple Music
