Watch: Kate Boy - Higher

A musician’s road to the top is normally a tale of small bar shows, weekly releases on Soundcloud and a fulltime day job, but sometimes it seems to happen effortlessly. The catalyst for Kate Boy’s rapid rise to success was the release of their breakout track Northern Lights and its accompanying video which cut through the noise of the time and helped to quench the international market’s thirst for Swedish material in the wake of acts like Icona Pop.

While to many artists this seems like the dream scenario – it does comes with it’s own unique pitfalls. It sets a precedent of quality that the public is unwilling to compromise on and the extra work and care that it demands means the gap between new content is measured in many months rather than weeks. The paradox is that a hot fire burns out the quickest and there is intense pressure to stoke the flames with further releases even more groundbreaking than the original spark.

So far Kate Boy have managed to walk that particular tightrope with a slow drip of highly polished but innovative dark pop anthems combined with what looks to be a taxing tour schedule, including multiple US tours and a constant presence in the European festival circuit. The one-part Australian/two-parts Swedish band's latest single Higher is a slow burning stomper matched with a well budgeted short film by director Ben Strebell, set to the wintery backdrop of Sweden’s northest of north’s, Kiruna. It’s also notable as the group’s first video shot outside of the controlled confines of a studio.

Higher is also the latest single to be taken from Kate Boy's self-titled EP, which you can get via iTunes HERE.

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