Kirsten Salty

After a lifetime of preparation, Sydney’s Kirsten Salty is ready to make her mark in music. Describing her sound as “controlled chaos”, her project’s blend of R’n’B influence with irresistible pop is refreshingly relatable.

Salty is one of Sydney pop’s new specialists in attitude with a soft edge. Raised on Kylie, Gwen Stefani and early-2000s radio, she has built a project that treats pop as a full aesthetic world rather than just a playlist slot. Her debut EP the other side lands like a tight 15-minute highlight reel of her twenties: crushes that overstayed, anxious nights, bad calls in good clubs, and the slow work of backing herself again.

Before that, she had already flagged what she was about. Je Ne Sais Quoi put her on the radar as a sharp, slightly cheeky writer with a strong visual sense, then Limbo arrived as a lo-fi, late-night pop cut sitting in the grey area of a relationship where no one will say what it is. Coverage at the time called it a song about exactly that in-between space, delivered with light touch rather than big ballad drama.

Across singles like Lucy, measured in heartbeats and Why Don’t We, she has been quietly widening the palette: flirtier pop, darker reflections on free will and happiness, and the straight-up kiss-off tracks that show up on the other side. 2024’s See U In 3 and the EP rollout pulled that all into focus, backed by headline dates and write-ups from future-facing pop outlets that treat her less like a newcomer and more like a name to track.

Salty on Limbo for Mood on the Roof is basically that early chapter in close-up. The song sits in a soft, hazy pocket, circling around the feeling of being stuck between “are we on” and “are we done,” delivered with the kind of casual shrug that only comes from someone who has now written herself out the other side.

Kirsten told Mood on the Roof that Limbo is about, “getting to that point [in a relationship] where it’s like, “Okay, so we have to talk about what’s happening now because we’ve been seeing each other for a certain amount of time.” It’s like that awkward question, “Mark, what are we? Are you my boyfriend? Are we exclusive?” That weird shit that no one likes to talk about.”

When she first started writing music, Kirsten described herself as structured and methodical. She’d write a song on the piano at home, pay a producer to build the track, and repeat. When she did collaborate with others in the studio, she’d go in with precise direction.

“I liked to go in knowing exactly what I was writing about. I’d go in with the title before even writing the song or hearing the beat or anything like that,” says Kirsten.

But as her experience has grown, her approach has flipped. “I feel like now, because I’ve written so calculatedly, I’m trying to open up to writing more like how I feel on the spot in the day, just kind of going with the flow more these days,” she says.

The years of refinement have clearly paid off for Kirsten, who’s proven in just two releases that she’s not one to look past.

Some artists see music as their only option, in the best kind of way. After a full education in performing arts, Kirsten is definitely one of them. Her training through the years had her studying to become a classic triple-threat in singing, dancing, and acting.

“I can’t do anything else. Like growing up, it was always dancing, performing arts, being on stage, acting, singing, writing, everything else was foreign, school was foreign. I wasn’t good at academics. I was like, “This has to work!”

But between dancing and singing, she doesn’t want to be pigeonholed into being one or the other.

“I love dancing and I feel like incorporating it tastefully into an artist project is like my goal. I want people to watch me and be like, “Oh, she can dance, she can move,” before they’re like, “She’s a dancer that’s [also] an artist,” she says.

Kirsten’s natural sense of visual style seemed to slot right into how the music sounds. She says that’s because she’s never played a persona – she’s Kirsten Salty both on and off stage.

“I find it really surprising when artists have a look, like their artist-look and then their normal life look. That’s so foreign to me, because I feel like I am always Kirsten Salty.”

“The way I dress in shoots or like going daily, that’s how I dress normally. I love clothes and I love looking good and cool and finding new trends and testing shit out and not really following the rules. I love that shit. And I respect artists that do that. So following in that path is like a goal for sure.”