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Every Monday we will be bringing you interviews with unsigned UK or Ireland artists for Independent Music Monday. Recently we caught up with Catty from unsigned duo Dusky Grey to find out more…

Who is in the duo, how did you meet, where are you from and how did you come up with the name?
We’re a Duo called Dusky Grey (Gethin Williams and Catrin Hopkins). We lived about 20 minutes down the road to each other in Wales but actually met over Facebook when Geth was doing a collaborative album with local talent. I (Catty) had heard his previous Album so I messaged him so we could work together. During that meeting we wrote a song together which became our first single ‘Told Me.’ It got the attention of a few record labels and we ended up signing to Warner (East West / Parlophone) and becoming a band that same week. That song currently stands at 12 million streams!
The name was used originally used by Geth for his own project before the duo, which loosely translates to his first and middle name. Gethin being Dusky and Llwyd being Grey.

Who were your musical influences when you were growing up and who are your influences now?
Geth – I grew up on artists like Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Kate Bush, Fleetwood Mac, New Order, Bill Withers etc as my parents would listen to them! Then I started finding my own artists such as Ed Sheeran, Jack Savoretti, Twenty One Pilots, Drake, Eminem, David Guetta, Diplo, Major Lazer and more. Ed Sheeran, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan and Major Lazer being my main inspirations to start writing and producing music.
Catty – My parents always had 70s / 80s music playing in the house so a lot of my musical influences come from what I heard then, but Fleetwood Mac is always my answer to this question – their sound is so comforting to me. I honestly just listen to the same few artists on rotation so it’s mostly just Fleetwood Mac, Lady Gaga, Lennon Stella and Seinabo Sey at the moment!

How would you describe your sound?
We’d describe our sound as catchy stories. Our aim is always to have catchy hooks and bright production but we also want the song to be able to stand alone if we were just to sing it live with a guitar/piano. We are songwriters first and foremost who love creating stories and writing about our own. We found songwriting as a good way to release emotions so over time we have really enjoyed putting parts of ourselves into each song. All that together makes a good Dusky Grey song.

What is your latest release called and what was the influence behind it?
Our latest release is called ‘Can Take It’ and it was written just after we had spent 2 weeks in Scandinavia and right in the middle of our first headline tour. Catty had tonsillitis and I had only just recovered from mine. Funnily enough all the vocals we got that day have stayed in the final version! This is the first release that I (Geth) Co-Produced on one of our songs which is fun! Catty and I are friends first and band members second – We were always there to chat to each other about our problems and work things out together but sometimes, because we’re human, people keep things to themselves because they don’t want to burden anyone or tell people what’s going on so this song was about us recalling a time when we were doing exactly that and became a little sour towards each other. So this song was really our way of saying to each other “tell me your truth, I can take it, we’ll figure it out.”

What’s your local music scene like?
Wales is full of incredible, incredible talent and the scene has really gotten a lot better in the last few years. When we were starting out it was hard to know where to take your music but there’s a lot more people to connect with now.

What do you have planned for the next 12 months?
We are currently 2 singles into a 7 track Ep called ‘Pleased You’re Gone’ so we’re super excited to release the others.
Catty has spent most of lockdown working on her solo artist project – writing songs on Zoom with her favourite producers and songwriters and I’m (Geth) focusing more on producing and Songwriting for other artists and working very closely with Multiplatinum songwriter and producer James Earp (Lewis Capaldi – Bruises). This year’s been a busy one!

Is there anyone you’d love to collaborate with?
There are always way too many people to name – we love lots of different artists. I (Catty) would love to work with MNEK, Bloodpop or Miley Cyrus at the moment!
Geth would love to collab with artists such as Major Lazer, Mura Masa, Jadu Heart, Ava Max, JP Saxe, 24kGoldn, Awa, Blackbear and more.

Any funny stories surrounding your live performances?
Once Geth went up on stage and did the whole hour set with his fly down. We had no idea, but it was VERY obvious to everyone else as the top button of his jeans was also open. We continued the show as normal and found out by email from our marketing team at the time that read “Geth your fly was down the whole show, can we please try to avoid this from now on,” then we realised. I also remember when we were opening for Emma Blackery at KOKO – we used to do a chant at the end of our song ‘A Little Bit” where we would hop off stage to be closer to the crowd. This went smoothly until we had to get back onto the stage, Geth jumped back on with no problem, but I had a big water bucket blocking my way so we had to finish the set with Geth on the stage alone whilst I was climbing up the side of a speaker. Good fun.

What is the one thing that you want readers to know about you?
We would like people to know that we’re songwriters too. We are a Pop band but we take a lot of time to write our songs and try to make them relatable and comforting to people.

You can find out more about Dusky Grey via Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, Spotify, Twitter or YouTube.

UPDATE: On 24th April, Dusky Grey announced that they would also be working on their solo music too. You can follow Geth via Instagram, Spotify or Twitter, and you can follow Catty via Apple Music, Instagram, SoundCloud, Spotify or Twitter.