Kat Velasco was raised in South Carolina and still splits her time between Columbia and Charleston, even as Nashville serves as her creative base. That push and pull between home and elsewhere runs through her music. The sound she calls “Western Pop” draws on country, pop, rock and Americana, and refuses to settle in any one of them. It is built on smoky vocals, sharp humour and emotionally exposed storytelling.
She introduced herself in 2021 with the single “Cliché Country Song,” a title that signalled both her wit and her willingness to poke at the genre she was entering. Since then, her songs have found placement on Spotify’s New Music Friday Country and Fresh Finds Country playlists. Her video for “Call Me” earned a CMT premiere, and she has shared stages with BRELAND and Tiera Kennedy along the way.
Now, on Friday, October 30, Velasco releases Cowgirl Complex, her full-length debut. It is nine songs gathered from three earlier EPs into what feels like the story they were telling all along. The title is her own coinage, and she means it as something closer to a personal thesis than a look. For her, being a cowgirl has little to do with where you’re from and everything to do with what you carry: restlessness, independence, and, as she puts it, “femininity with some dirt underneath it.”
The second word is where the record lives. The “complex” is everything the myth leaves out. “‘Cowgirl’ is this very recognizable idea, tough, independent, wild, and doesn’t need anybody,” Velasco says. “And then there’s the ‘complex’ part. Because I absolutely do need people. I fall hard. I overthink. I leave and then miss home. I can be incredibly confident and incredibly insecure in the same hour. Eventually I realized that contradiction wasn’t something I needed to fix. It was the whole record.” It is a rare thing to hear an artist treat her own contradictions as material rather than problems. Velasco does it without apology, and often with a laugh.
Cowgirl Complex was never planned as a concept album. Velasco wrote it alongside Johnny Gates, who is her co-writer, producer, and, in her words, best friend. “We sat down and wrote and then just kept writing,” she recalls. The songs came during a stretch when she was finished with other people’s expectations. Something loosened, and the writing followed. “Once I stopped trying to make everything make sense, the album started making sense,” she reflects.
Gates and Caleb Fisher produced the record, with Fisher also mixing much of it. The supporting cast is a deep one. Joey Myron co-wrote. Fred Eltringham and Jared Kneale play drums, and Kevin MacIntire and Jacob Lowery play bass. Guitars come from Tim Galloway, Nathan Keeterle, Sam Hunter, and Thomas Mireles, while Scotty Sanders, Eddy Dunlap, Johnny Fung, and Lance Martin bring pedal steel. Joanna Finley handled engineering, and Bill Zimmerman created the spatial audio mix.
The influences Kat Velasco names sit on both sides of a line. There is the cinematic, moody storytelling of Stevie Nicks, Lana Del Rey and Kacey Musgraves, and there is the grit of Sheryl Crow, Shania Twain and AC/DC. On Cowgirl Complex, they share a room.
She is clear about what she didn’t want to make. “I never wanted this record to sound like I was chasing whatever country music was doing at the moment,” she explains. “I wanted guitars, rasp, personality, and songs that could still sound good ten years from now.” That patience, a refusal to chase the moment in favour of making something that lasts, may be the most cowgirl thing about her.
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Images provided courtesy of Milestone Collective
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