Garrett Kato

Garrett Kato is a Canadian-born musician whose hushed and thoughtful folk-pop songwriting earned him an audience after he relocated to Byron Bay, Australia in the early 2010s. Following the 2015 release of his debut album and a prominent song placement in the Hollywood comedy Bad Moms, Kato’s career took off thanks in part to the 2017 streaming hit “Take It Slowly.” Also a producer, he worked with Australian artists like Ziggy Alberts and Kyle Lionhart before returning to his own work with 2020′s full-length Hemispheres and 2022′s Small Town Rituals.
A native of Vancouver, Kato cycled through a variety of influences in his teenage years from hip-hop to metal before taking an interest in folk and Americana songwriting. A 2010 trip to southeastern Australia’s coastal city of Byron Bay brought on a life change for the then-23-year-old artist who soon settled there full-time. Working his way up from busking and playing in small clubs, Kato’s blend of introspective indie folk and lightly pulsing pop drew the attention of Sony/ATV, which offered him a publishing deal. Released in 2015 by Nettwerk Records, the full-length That Low and Lonesome Sound served to introduce him to the masses and one of its songs, “Sweet Jane,” found its way onto the soundtrack of the 2016 comedy Bad Moms. Kato found success on the road as well, touring alongside Damien Rice and Ziggy Alberts while branching out into production with the latter’s platinum-selling EP Four Feet in the Forest. His breakthrough came in 2017 with “Take It Slowly,” a gently strummed ballad that eventually racked up over ten million streams. Kato continued to issue a steady diet of singles over the next few years, including the 2019 EP Distant Land. In 2020, he returned with a pair of EPs: s. hemisphere, which told the story of his life in Australia, and n. hemisphere, which looked back on his time in Canada. That December saw the release of Hemispheres, which combined the EPs with acoustic versions as well as previously unreleased songs. Kato kicked off the following year with a pair of singles, “Be” and “Firestarter,” the latter of which was co-written by Australian singer/songwriter Ainslie Wills. In 2022 Kato issued the full-length Small Town Rituals, which included the hits “With You” and “Drugstore Houses.” ~ Timothy Monger