INTERVIEW: Charlotte MacInnes releases her debut EP ‘Highwater’: “They are intrinsically very feminist rage songs…I'd love people to feel like they can do anything.”

Interview: Shalane Connors
Published: 26 June 2026

Australian singer, songwriter and actress Charlotte MacInnes is one of music’s rising stars. Her alternative pop sound, which trades on trip hop, folk and traditional pop laced with an ethereal undertone, makes it easy to see why she is quickly emerging as one of Australia’s most promising young artists.

Growing up in Albany in rural Western Australia, MacInnes studied at the prestigious Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) before moving to Sydney. She secured roles in Netflix’s North Shore and Florence Welch’s musical Gatsby, produced by the American Repertory Theatre, and her big screen breakthrough in the movie The Deb.

Earlier this year MacInnes launched her music career with the release of her debut single ‘Struck’, a driving pop song with a brooding beat and a captivating, atmospheric soundscape. 

Today MacInnes takes the next step in her music career with the release of her debut EP Highwater. Featuring five tracks, it is an impressive display of what MacInnes is capable of as a musician, with a remarkably expressive vocal as well as a sonic dexterity which takes you through multiple moods and senses as you listen through.

EP opener ‘Down To The River’ opens with an almost mystical slice of folk and a breathy vocal from MacInnes before it transforms into a stomping trip-hop sound with her voice moving from a whisper to her upper range with ease.

‘Only Pretend’ is a cinematic track, almost breathtaking in its scope as it switches pace and intensity throughout. With verses featuring a brooding, pared back electronic beat mixed with strings and keyboards, MacInnes sings of someone who has done her wrong before the chorus explodes in a rush of multiple vocals singing ‘I never knew a ghost would be this loud’. It is an incredible sonic experience on first listen.

‘Beast’ changes things up even more, with a glorious uplifting synthpop sound and a power pop chorus as she sings of becoming someone you don’t recognise and wanting to be a previous version of yourself.

Recent single ‘Celestial’ follows the synth-electro-pop sound of ‘Beast’, full of delicious pop beats, infectious melodies and MacInnes soaring vocals. Lyrically it tells a less upbeat story of feeling disconnected from home and from life in general. “Going on this journey to write personal and vulnerable music, I struggled with my identity. The track was born out of the struggle,” MacInnes says of the song.

That sense of disconnection, and the driving force to experience more in life is a theme MacInnes explores across the album. And while that comes from a sense of frustration and pain, what MacInnes has done with this EP is turn that into a reclamation of joy and self. Highwater is a collection of music that leaves you feeling not only deeply connected to MacInnes’s music, but is also grounding and its otherworldly feel, even on the more traditional pop tracks, leaves you with a sense of being centred, or righted. A powerful example of how to create atmospheric pop with a true sense of meaning, MacInnes’s debut EP is a calling card for what a remarkable talent she is. Shalane Connors for Women In Pop recently met with MacInnes to chat more about the creation of the EP.

Hi Charlotte! Congratulations on the release of your debut EP Highwater. How does it feel to have it finally out in the world? 
It feels incredible. It feels like a lifetime of moments and experiences all sort of dancing together in something that I'm really proud to be out in the world.

You are a very well-seasoned performer in terms of being on stage and singing and delivering other people's music, but this is the first time you've been up front, sharing lyrics and melodies that you've penned yourself. How does that experience compare when it's your own work?
Firstly, that's very kind! It is completely different, sometimes it feels like a whole different art form. It has made me more emotionally connected to what I'm writing and what I'm singing. That's your job as an actor, to find a way to create an emotional connection to what you're singing, whereas I don't really have to do that with my music, it's automatically there. The emotional part of it is the most important part to me. It's very freeing, it's very liberating singing songs that you wrote. And when you see people react to them, it's very, very special. I’m very honoured to have experienced that, and just cannot wait to see what comes next.

Comparing it to acting work, does it feel vulnerable not having a character to hide behind, or is that something you find quite freeing, because you don't have to think about a character?
I think it's more the latter. I've always been the kind of actor that's not particularly good at putting on a different suit of person. I'm very much Charlotte, and I'll do the absolute best I can to become a character through myself. The roles that I have done have not been crazy far away from who I am, there's little bits of those gals that exist intrinsically within me. I’ve learned so much through the characters I have performed that I feel like they live within.

Where did the concept of Highwater begin, and how did you go about finding an authentic sound that represents you as a first time creator stepping out onto the stage?
Great question. It's a lot of trial and error! It's a lot of ‘maybe it's this, with a little mixture of this’. I'm wrong a lot more than I’m right, but  you really need to do what's truthful and really listen to yourself. Sometimes you're trying to do that, but there's something stopping you from doing that. I feel like I went in a big spiral and ended up where my initial love for music was, which was Celtic music, and really cinematic music.

There's a song on the EP called ‘Beast’, which was kind of the turning point. It was like something clicked the day we wrote that. It was like, ‘oh wait, that feels like the sound’, and we kind of worked backwards from there. There's other songs that I'd written before ‘Beast’ that then applied this new exciting, what I call ethereal pop logic to. That song is very much the catalyst, it was the big bang.

You said there are Celtic influences in there. Is that a family history thing? 
Yes, it is. My dad is Scottish, and when I was growing up he played a lot of Celtic music, and I was so drawn to it. I was enchanted by female Celtic voices, I didn't know what they were saying because they were singing in Gaelic a lot of the time, but the emotion was so obvious. It’s just a magical sound, and then we paired that with very Kate Bush, big 80s drums, and that was the birth of that.

Talk to me about your recording process, and also your collaboration process, because you collaborated with a couple of producers and musicians on this EP.
I'm very much still learning exactly what that looks like, but I wrote a song today and I was talking with the team - how do you like to work? At the moment, I like to go in with no idea, no melody, no lyric, no nothing, and ultimately just see what happens, and the song sort of unfolds and writes itself. At least the best songs that I've ever written have happened that way. I also listened to this amazing interview recently with a female songwriter and she said she has like a no rewrite rule, she says you might be killing magic that you don't know is even there. So that's something I've been doing a lot, and it's been really working. You doubt yourself, you'll write something, you don't really know how people are going to perceive it, and then you overthink it, and you change it, and you've lost this beautiful magic pearl that you may have started with. So that’s what I’m doing at the moment, not judging myself, creating something that might feel imperfect, but every song is imperfect, and no one knows what's good or bad.

Straight out of high school you went and studied musical theatre at WAAPA  in Western Australia, a very prestigious Australian musical theatre school. Musical theatre is such a specific clique within the industry, how have you gone about being able to kind of step out and have your eggs in so many baskets and not be kind of typecast as a musical theatre girl?
I don't know! I spent five years at WAAPA. I was there for such a long time, but the reason I was so determined to do musical theatre is because I saw those performers, and I thought I would love to study a course where they do the singing part, the dancing part, and the acting part, because why not? I would love to have my eggs in every basket. Let's do it all and see what happens. I never wanted to limit myself, I think the idea that you can only be one thing is ridiculous. I think you can reinvent yourself 100,000 times, I don't think you just get one chance at anything, and I think this industry is a really good example of that. If you want to be a director and ballerina, you should absolutely do that. 

When I was at WAAPA, I could not dance, and I still to this day cannot really dance, but I was so excited to be able to taste all of those parts of the pie to find out what spoke to me and my body and my desires and what didn't. The more I got through that course, the more I felt singing was my purpose, but I fell in love with acting on the way, and I was fortunate enough to get some roles that also had singing involved. I've only ever done one project that didn't involve singing, so singing is always going to be the through line, that's my heart.

What place did music hold in your life before studying it full time?
I really believed that everyone wanted to be a pop star, I didn't think that people wanted to be astronauts or doctors or whatever. I really genuinely wanted to be a pop star, and it sounds so naff, but it was everything. I can attach a song to every moment of my life, pre WAAPA, and then during WAAPA, every part. An album, an artist, a sound or a genre is woven into every chapter of my life. It's always meant everything. No matter what was happening in my life, I always thought to myself that I always have to make sure I'm able to sing, and everything will be okay. 

You've entered into the industry at a time where you have to be on social media, you can't not be on it. It’s all about content creation. How do you handle that, having to constantly put your image out there?
That is an everyday conversation I have with myself, and that requires a lot of protection. I think there's an amazing element to it, an incredible life-changing element that we can use and play with. It's another medium to make art, and that's fucking excellent. But then there's a really scary, confusing part that we're yet to understand, we're still learning. When I'm in a good place with it, I love being extra super creative and silly. As much as you can, have fun because as soon as it feels like a task, it just loses all of its sparkle. I remember posting on Instagram when I was a teenager, and the lack of pressure that we felt, and how cringe wasn't a thing. I think being cringe sets you free!

How do you handle having so much of yourself out there on public platforms, your image, your body, your craft. Do you think there's still this level of expectation and critique on young women as opposed to our male counterparts?
I think things have progressed and regressed like they do constantly. We go however many steps forward, however many steps back for women. I think there's a new element of autonomy that we have that can be really liberating, and can be really restricting in other ways, because the expectation changes and you're expected to change along with the expectations. I think women's bodies and ideas being trends, or trendy, is hellish. The idea that you have to be a certain type of woman at a certain time in history is very bad. I think for the first time in history women are overtaking men in a lot of different disciplines for the first time. I saw recently, and I thought it was so iconic, that women are dating men these days exclusively for their personalities for the first time. Not for their safety, or the other shit that we were meant to have men around for. I have a lot of great male friends and collaborators, but they kept around for how incredible they are, and their beautiful personalities, not because they have to be there. Most of my team are women. Almost every show I've ever done has had women directors and producers and writers across the board. So I was kind of raised by women in this industry, and I don't know any different.

How do you keep yourself grounded when you're in these situations where there are so many eyes on you, and there is so much pressure?
I have tricks, I've got rituals, I've got crystals, I've got Palo Santo, I've got oracle cards, I've got candles, I've got flowers, I've got plants, I've got all the bits, girlfriend! I think the one thing I like to remember is that people can have opinions about your life and your art and your body, and by making a decision to be in the public eye in any way, shape, or form, you are giving people permission to do that. But they will never be able to actually know and touch my spirit that exclusively exists to me and the people that I choose to share that with. That has been very settling on this journey, because sometimes it can feel like things are completely out of your control, and your voice is taken away from you, and I refuse to let that happen.

Fuck yeah! Let's talk about what's coming up next for you now the EP is out. Are you going on tour, what can we expect? 
That is the dream, that is the absolute dream. There are no solidified plans yet. I would love to, I will play the littlest venues you got, I just am excited to be able to get that feeling back into my body. I'm used to performing, I was fortunate enough to perform up until a year or two ago, and it's the longest stint that I've not been consistently performing. So I'm like, give me the stage, give me a microphone. That feeling is just like nothing else. The plan is to release this EP while writing the next one, and I will have a good amount of songs out by the end of the year so I will be ripe and ready for performing live. Even if that's in my hometown, to my mum and all her mates, it'll be an honour!

One last question, what is the one thing that you hope your audiences walk away with after listening to your EP?
They are intrinsically very feminist rage songs. I would love for people to feel like the world is limitless, and that feeling that they have when they stand on the edge of a cliff - you look out and you think, ‘oh my goodness, I'm so tiny, and the world is so magical and beautiful’. I would love to have people feel that feeling, because that is the place I went to a lot of the time when I was writing these songs and connecting to the emotions that's in them. I'd love people to feel like they can do anything, and to take life by the horns and do it exactly the way that they want to do it. Because we can now.

Highwater is out now via Warner Music. You can download and stream here.
Follow Charlotte MacInnes on Instagram and TikTok