Ten years into their career, The Mowgli’s have seen just about every chapter a band can go through: lineup changes, label shakeups, and the long, strange balancing act of staying hopeful while living on a tour bus. “Every rock-and-roll cliché you’ve read about or seen in a documentary—we’ve been through it,” says Josh Hogan, laughing. “It’s kind of hilarious when you look back.”
But what stands out most isn’t chaos—it’s survival. “For me, the thing I’m most proud of right now is our resilience,” says frontwoman Katie Earl. “We’ve been kicked off labels, people have told us it’s over, and we just keep finding reasons to keep going. If we can push through that, hopefully someone else out there can, too.”
That spirit drives their latest single, “Fighting With Yourself,” a song about self-doubt that still feels like an anthem. Hogan wrote it, but Earl’s voice makes it burn. “It’s funny,” she says. “Josh wrote it before a lot of the lineup changes even happened. Then when I sang it, it felt like my story. The meaning evolved.”
Hogan adds, “It’s about wanting to be the best version of yourself, about pulling yourself out of the background. Definitely personal—but hopefully universal.”
Their earlier EP American Feelings dealt in the same kind of optimism-through-grit, wrestling with what it means to stay empathetic in a fractured country. “Each song felt like a different kind of societal angst,” Earl explains. “We kept coming back to that phrase—American feelings. It just fit.”
There’s irony in that title when you consider one of their earliest songs was “The Great Divide.” “Yeah,” Earl laughs, “that’s a really good point. But I actually think we’re more united than it looks on the internet. When you’re face to face, you realize people have a lot more in common.”
That perspective has always been part of The Mowgli’s DNA. The band came up during the Occupy movement, writing hopeful protest songs like “Times Are Still Changing.” “We want people to sing along,” Hogan says. “Even when the subject’s heavy, it should still feel good to sing. Over time, our songs have become less personal and more about what everyone’s feeling—but it’s still the same core: connection.”
They’ve also learned to write outside themselves—literally. The group has dabbled in children’s television, performing for Sesame Street Helpsters and writing the theme for Disney’s Big City Greens. “That Sesame Street day was one of the best of my life,” Earl beams. “My wedding day, then that.”
The experience turned out to be both surreal and humbling. “The puppeteers are geniuses,” she says. “You forget there’s a person under there. I was having full conversations with a puppet between takes. It’s such an art form—it’s magical.”
That sense of joy—and their ability to find it anywhere—seems to be their secret weapon. These days, they’re touring with Plain White T’s and New Politics, sharing buses and swapping late-night talks instead of hangovers. “We’ve done the wild tours,” Earl says. “Now we cook dinner, skip rocks at Lake Tahoe, and stay up having intelligent conversations. It’s still late nights, just with better food and fewer bad decisions.”
The new single marks another chapter of reinvention, with Earl taking the lead. But for all the changes, the foundation stays the same. “We want to make music that makes people feel less alone,” she says. “That’s been the mission from the start.”
And there’s more coming. The band teased a new song called “Wasting Time,” due just ahead of their U.K. tour. “We’re excited for people to hear it,” Hogan says. “It feels like everything we’ve been through distilled into one song.”
Maybe that’s the real through line for The Mowgli’s—a decade of change, loss, laughter, and perseverance, sung with the same sunny harmonies that made them stand out in the first place. Or as Earl puts it, “Every time it feels like we’re starting over, we just go back to the reason we started: it’s about the message, not the mess.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
