LITTLE GUILT
- 5 days ago
- 7 min read
Interviewer/Writer: Joseph Maranta
Photos: Rhys Rogers | @Rhysrogersvisuals
L-R: Lachlan Thomson, Joe Knowles, Ella Melton, Brady Keirnan and Bevyn Tarboton
Four years ago I was sat at a wooden table awaiting the arrival of a half-priced bacon and egg roll and coffee, courtesy of my former employer, Remy’s in Paddington.
It was a quarter past ten and a quarter past the agreed clock-in time of my first internship, a remote role with a Melbourne-based music PR agency. In all honesty, I applied for the internship because I was two years into a journalism degree I somewhat regretted, and having fallen for the sunk cost fallacy, I figured I should get some real-world experience in my industry before I graduated.
During my four-month stint with said PR agency, I’d routinely find myself skimping on my assigned work and instead burrowing deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of emerging Australian artists.
It was during one of these unproductive days at Remy’s where I first found Little Guilt.
First coming across one of their early singles, Nowhere, I was immediately enamoured by their effervescent indie-pop sound and resonant writing. I’ve followed them ever since, and one thing I’ve come to learn about the Boorloo quintet is that despite rarely straying from their roots, Little Guilt are anything but stagnant.
Fast forward to 2026 and the band has only gone from strength to strength. The sound I fell in love with as a delinquent intern remains ingrained in their current music, just more refined and reflective of the band’s half-decade of growth.
On the heels of Little Guilt’s brilliant latest single, Double Down, I sat down with two of the five musicians behind my passion for Australian music.
Here’s my chat with Ella Melton and Lachlan ‘Mop’ Thomson of Little Guilt.
JOE: Little Guilt! You were one of the first bands I got into when I began listening to Aussie music, it’s so cool to be able to chat. How have you been lately? What have you been up to this year?
ELLA: We went to SXSW in Austin in March, which was just so good.
You’re just performing to industry people there mainly, so doing that on a big scale was a great opportunity for us, but it also turns out that we have some fans in Austin which was really cool. The USA holds a fair chunk of our listener base, so it was nice to dip our toes in over there.
JOE: You were able to check out NYC after Texas, so for your entire trip to the USA what was your highest high and your lowest low?
MOP: One of our lowest lows, which was kind of fun in retrospect, was doing three showcases in one day. We had our first show at 1PM, our second at 5PM and our third show at 1AM. We spent the entire day racing around with all of our gear. That 1AM set was rough…
ELLA: For me the highest high was just playing music, anytime we were on stage was pretty awesome and a pretty big high for me. Just being able to go to a whole new country and play music is pretty amazing.
But even for us as a band, the whole trip, it was very inspiring and motivating.
JOE: Last SXSW question, who was the highlight of the festival for you?
MOP: We played a few showcases with Wilby at SXSW and they were amazing.
But while I was in NYC I got to see a DJ set with Fcukers, The Dare and Kenny Beats. It was such an upsy New York night but I’m so glad I got to experience that.
ELLA: I got to see Swapmeet and Ella Ion at SXSW, and they’re artists I’ve been wanting to see for so long. They were so great.
JOE: Just recently in May you got to play back-to-back shows with Brisbane’s finest, Ball Park Music, what was that experience like?
MOP: They were so great live, just so tight in how they played.
Something I’m trying to improve on as a musician is interacting with and involving the crowd in our set, and they did such a good job of that, and I definitely took some notes away from playing alongside them.
And obviously they’re just such nice people, they were really down to earth and it was cool to do that with a band I’ve loved for so long, they’d be one of my top five Aussie bands.
JOE: You’ve just released your latest single ‘Double Down’, which to me feels like a progression from your two singles last year, sonically. What can you tell us about the new track?
MOP: The two singles we did last year were an attempt to change up our sound from our prior releases, they were somewhat of a transitional period between our last EP and our forthcoming sound.
We’d done a few demos midway through last year, and this was one of the first demos we all really loved. With Double Down, it has some elements of our past sound and some of our upcoming sound, it’s a bit of a mishmash between the two.
ELLA: I spent about three months on a Euro summer last year and left the boys to fend for themselves in Australia, but when they sent me the demo I fell in love with it, I couldn’t stop listening to it.
Especially that guitar lick throughout the chorus. I was so excited to come back and record it.
I’m really glad that it kept the same life it had as a demo. Mop (Lachie) has done such a good job with the lyrics. Mop and Joe have done a lot of the writing for our upcoming music, and for most of the demos we have I can really feel the emotions behind their lyrics, and I can understand the space they were in while writing them.
JOE: You’ve said that this release marks a new chapter for the band, why is that and what does this new chapter entail?
ELLA: I think this single ushers in a more mature sound from us.
We’ve definitely figured out what our sound is to a better extent, as well as what Little Guilt is—or wants to be. Looking back through our discography I see a lot of experimenting in our past music, but this release makes me feel more assured on who we are.
There’s been a bit of time between releases as well. But mature seems to be the word we keep coming back to when talking about this next period for us.
JOE: Was it important for the band’s sake to have a quieter year in 2025 release wise?
ELLA: Yeah I definitely think so.
It took a year like 2025 to figure out what was important to us. We lost our original bassist last year, and going through that was a bit of a wake-up call for us to question what we wanted to do and what we wanted from the band.
JOE: Has this new mindset of maturity affected your approach to writing and recording at all?
ELLA: Every time we record we’ll always go to the same place.
We record with Soak Sounds who are based in North Dandalup in WA, it’s the most beautiful studio—we’re pretty much recording on a cliff.
Dylan from Soak is actually our drummer’s brother which is awesome. Dylan has really progressed with us, he began more or less the same time we started and you can actually hear the evolution of his production throughout our discography.
But for this latest batch of music I think we’ve taken some ownership back during production and recording.
MOP: We’ve been more decisive this time around.
In the past, especially on our first few singles, we really had no clue on how to bring things together in our music. But over the past few years our taste has refined and we’ve identified our likes and dislikes.
We’re able to go into the studio with a clear thought process of “I want this part to stay and I want this part to go.”
Having that clear image of what we want has been very freeing for us, and it was the most noticeable change for us compared to past recording sessions.
JOE: Your sound has evolved quite a bit from your origins in 2021, so this time around which artists were you drawing from for inspiration?
MOP: I’d say it was less artists I drew from and more specific songs. Girl Behind the Glass by Wunderhorse is definitely a song we all love.
ELLA: Empire of The Sun was a big one for all of us, their combination of indie and pop and their use of acoustics.
Junior Varsity as well, especially for Double Down, Joe said that his guitar solo was inspired by one of their tracks.
JOE: When I think about Perth artists who have resisted the move east, Little Guilt is the first band that comes to mind. Why have you stayed in Perth for so long, and has the city become embedded in your music as a result?
ELLA: It’s definitely a divisive topic within the band.
There are a lot of benefits moving east, and we do find it tricky trying to veer from the dominant indie surf rock sound of Perth.
What’s helped us a bit is the fact that there isn’t a lot of competition within our sound here, so it benefits us in terms of supporting big artists who come play here, like we just got a supporting slot with Wolf Alice for example which is so, so exciting.
But at the end of the day the music industry isn’t in Perth. It’s such an amazing city to come up in, it’s such a close community here and it’s very easy to put yourself out there, but at some point as a band you meet a crossroads about staying in Perth.
But we can’t lie, the city is 100% rooted in our sound and we’d have it no other way than coming out from Perth.
JOE: Just finally, you would’ve had a few of these songs in your setlists for a while now, so which songs are you most excited to get out into the world?
ELLA: We’ve been playing two other songs which are yet to come out, and they’ve been very well received, especially at the Ball Park Music show which was filled with people who’d never heard our music before.
But there’s one upcoming song called Pool which is so fun live, it’s probably our most indie-rock song and it’s been so so fun to play live, so I’m excited to eventually release that.
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