There are few things more frustrating than a major technical issue at the start of an interview. That’s all that was happening for the first 15 minutes I spent with Katseye. Static, a dying laptop battery, frozen cameras, and more plagued our attempt at a video call from the two most different places possible: while the group’s five active members (Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Megan Skiendiel, Yoonchae Jeung, and Sophia Laforteza) are sequestered in a remote dance studio in Los Angeles, rehearsing for their Coachella set on Friday night, I’m at Blackberry Farm in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains.
By the time everybody was coming through loud and clear, the girls are cuddled up on a giant couch in black-and-white dance gear. “We’ve been working for weeks on our performance—9 a.m. to 11 p.m. today—because we want it to be as perfect as possible,” Avanzini says. “We’ve been working on some new things, so it’s going to be very different.”
Music isn’t the only thing they’ll be debuting on the Sahara Stage; last week, the group decided it was time for a makeover, and celebrity hairstylist and Matrix brand ambassador George Papanikolas was on hand to make it all happen. (Katseye is a global brand ambassador for the brand, as well.) The change began with Jeung, who, in her own words, has “been wanting to go blonde for a while now and finally convinced our visual creative team”—namely, creative director Humberto Leon and visual director João Moraes.
She cites Pinterest as an important source of inspiration for her golden-blonde makeover: “I don’t even know who the person is in the inspiration photo, I just knew I wanted the color to have a little bit of yellow,” she says.
From there, it wasn’t long before the rest of the group hopped on the bleach bandwagon, each to totally different ends. “The looks have this natural edge to them because we all have some elements of black hair and some elements of blonde hair, with Yoonchae being completely blonde,” Raj says. That edge, she adds slyly, was “something we wanted to showcase with our new album.”
Colton Williams/Matrix
Raj’s Y2K-style blonde highlights were inspired by another pop music great: Christina Aguilera (or, as Raj calls her, “Xtina”). “The 2000s are an era of music and pop culture that we find really inspiring,” she says. “I’ve always loved the song ‘Dirrty’ and wanted to have those types of streaks in my hair since I was eight. It’s still edgy, but I like that I could keep the black hair around my face and just add in bright little blonde pops.”
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