There is a particular kind of band that you can tell, even before you hear a note, is going to be worth your time, the kind whose origin story and whose sensibility and whose general approach to existing as a musical unit all signal that they understand the most important thing about punk rock, which is that taking the music seriously and taking yourself too seriously are entirely different propositions and that the best version of the genre keeps the first while abandoning the second. Cat TV, the Lowell, Massachusetts punk outfit whose debut EP Fun in the Ghost Town arrives May 29, 2026, is exactly this kind of band, six tracks of raw fist-pumping garage alterna-punk made by a five-piece in which nearly everyone plays bass, fronted by a singer who recorded her lead vocals in a studio shower with the water off, named not after that singer but after the YouTube videos made to keep housecats entertained.
The detail about nearly everyone playing bass is the kind of thing that tells you a great deal about a band’s spirit. Caitlin Malcuit fronts and co-writes, Steve Herdegen co-writes and drums, and then the low-end situation gets gloriously crowded, with Quinn Lawrence on bass and lap steel, Jesse Buday on bass and guitar and keyboards, and Dino on bass and guitar. This is not a band organized around the conventional rock configuration of clearly delineated roles but one that came together organically and figured out the instrumentation as it went, the abundance of bassists being less a deliberate aesthetic choice than the natural result of a group of people who wanted to play together finding their way into the arrangement that worked. The looseness and the humor of this approach is audible in the band’s general sensibility, the refusal to be boxed in by genre extending to a refusal to be boxed in by the standard rules of how a rock band is supposed to be built.
The band’s origin tracks the now-familiar arc of creative partnerships that survived and used the COVID lockdown rather than being killed by it. Caitlin and Steve began writing together in 2019, got exactly one jam in with Jesse just before the lockdown hit, and then turned the isolation to their advantage, punching demos into GarageBand through a MIDI keyboard and a podcast microphone. This DIY origin, the making-do with available equipment and the determination to keep creating despite the circumstances, is foundational to the punk spirit that Fun in the Ghost Town embodies, the band having learned to make music from whatever was at hand rather than waiting for ideal conditions. Quinn came aboard after a fateful Taco Tuesday meeting, and Dino joined later to complete the five-piece, the band assembling itself through the kind of casual social chemistry that produces genuine creative bonds rather than calculated lineups.
The specific space that Cat TV occupies, music that has bite and atmosphere and a wicked sense of humor, is genuinely welcome in a landscape where too much music chooses one of those qualities at the expense of the others. Writing songs about Satanic Panic and jaguars and the human condition, the band refuses both the pure aggression that abandons humor and the pure novelty that abandons substance, finding instead the harder middle ground where the music can be funny and atmospheric and genuinely biting all at once. This combination is the mark of a band that understands punk at its most enduring, the tradition having always had room for the absurd and the comedic alongside the angry and the serious, the best practitioners knowing that a sense of humor is not the opposite of meaning something but frequently the vehicle for it.
Spiders opens the EP, the title suggesting the kind of creepy-crawly atmosphere that the band’s interest in Satanic Panic and the darker corners of American cultural anxiety would lead you to expect, the garage punk energy likely giving the arachnid subject a fittingly skittering and unsettling treatment. Girl follows with what its title implies, a song most likely about the perennial punk subject of attraction and complication, rendered through Cat TV’s specific lens of bite and humor rather than through straightforward romantic earnestness. Baby I’m Down is described as pure attitude, a punky anthem about ditching the grind and embracing freedom, driven by relentless drumming and collective noise, and it represents the EP’s most direct statement of the liberatory impulse that runs through punk at its most energizing, the rejection of the daily grind in favor of something freer and louder and more alive.
Impostor! arrives with its exclamation point announcing its energy, the impostor theme tapping into the contemporary cultural preoccupation with authenticity and its opposite, the punk tradition having always been suspicious of the fake and the performed, the song likely turning that suspicion into something cathartic and loud. JAG U R is the standout track and a proven crowd favorite at live shows, born from a real and deeply relatable frustration, Steve stuck behind a luxury vehicle moving at a maddening crawl on the highway. This origin is perfect punk material, the transformation of an ordinary moment of everyday helplessness into something cathartic and loud, the maddening experience of being trapped behind a slow-moving Jaguar becoming the basis for a song that lets everyone who has ever been in that exact situation scream along with recognition. The genius of this kind of songwriting is its specificity and its relatability, the highway frustration being something almost everyone has experienced, the song giving collective voice to a small universal rage.
Drugz N Alcohol closes the EP with a title that announces its engagement with the perennial subjects of the punk and rock tradition, the stylized spelling signaling the band’s irreverent approach to even the most well-worn territory. The placement of this track at the EP’s conclusion gives Fun in the Ghost Town an appropriately raucous send-off, the band leaving the listener in the full energy of its garage punk attitude rather than fading out on something quieter.
The EP was recorded at Blue Banshee Recording Studio in Brewster, owned and operated by Chris Duggan of Ruin the Nite, and the studio lore is worth preserving for what it tells you about the band’s approach. Malcuit recorded her lead vocals in the studio’s shower, the water not running, the unconventional recording space presumably chosen for its acoustic qualities and embraced with the kind of willingness to do whatever works that defines the DIY punk sensibility. This detail, the lead vocals tracked in a dry shower, is the perfect encapsulation of a band that uses whatever is available and refuses to be precious about the process.
Cat TV has been building a devoted following in the Lowell scene through live shows known for energy and costume and a refusal to be boring, and Fun in the Ghost Town is their introduction to the rest of the world. Caitlin shows up to every show in flashy costumes, which fits the band’s name even though the name actually comes from the YouTube videos made to entertain housecats rather than from the singer herself. The upcoming August 1 show at The Worthen Attic on a stacked bill with Couchboy and WLKRZ and The Ghouls will extend the live reputation that the band has built, bringing the energy and the costume and the refusal to be boring to a wider audience.
Fun in the ghost town is exactly what Cat TV offers, the ghost town being whatever desolate or abandoned or haunted space the listener finds themselves in, and the fun being the loud and funny and biting noise that this five-piece with four bassists makes to fill it. Six tracks, no boredom, and a frontwoman who sings from the shower. The arrival statement of a band worth following.
