Little Finch

Kate Mahood

A lament to the beauty of our endangered species, and humanity’s impact upon them

Why I wrote this song

I wrote this song a few years ago after waking from a haunting dream in which I wandered through a desolate wasteland and came across a tiny bird on a wire, the very last of its kind. That bird was the endangered Black-throated Finch, whose plight I had recently learned about, and whose last remaining habitats were under threat from mining expansion in Queensland. Growing up in rural Queensland with a lifelong fascination and love for birds, the finch’s story felt especially close to home.

On a broader level, I wrote the song to speak to the beauty of all our natural species, the heartbreak of watching them threatened through our own destruction in the name of progress, and to contemplate the sobering reality that once a species is gone, it is gone for all time.

About me as an artist

Kate Mahood is a Queensland-based folk singer-songwriter whose music blends delicate folk stylings with the raw storytelling heart of country. With a voice that carries both tenderness and strength, Mahood’s songs explore vulnerability, resilience, and the quiet power of personal truth.

Renowned for her captivating live performances, Mahood has shared stages with artists such as Busby Marou, Harry Manx, The Whitlams and Alex Lloyd, and continues to appear regularly at festivals and events across the country.

Her debut EP Once You Were a Mountain (2024) was met with acclaim for its emotional depth and lyrical beauty, following the success of singles like Changeling—a lush alt-country ballad inspired by the true story of a young Irish woman. Her most recent single, Like The Eagle, is a soaring folk-indie anthem about reclaiming personal power and inner freedom.

Currently writing from Central Queensland, Mahood is busy working on a her next EP.

About the music video

This video is my attempt to capture the feeling I woke with after the dream that inspired Little Finch. I used drawings of the Black-throated Finch and handwritten lyrics, like trying to bring back to life what I’d seen in that dream—set against the contrast of being in a landscape, searching for something that might already be gone.

I filmed it on Darumbal country close to where I live to showcase some of our beautiful rural Queensland landscape, and to hopefully convey to viewers a sense of what it means to be gone ‘for all time.’