Mallrat

A Brisbane teenager with a borrowed name

Grace Kathleen Elizabeth Shaw was born in Brisbane on 25 September 1998. She went to Ascot State School and then Clayfield College, and started writing songs while she was still there. The stage name came off a punk record — "Mallrats (La La La)" by The Orwells — and it stuck to a body of work that has almost nothing to do with punk.

Her first single, "Suicide Blonde", appeared on 23 July 2015. The debut EP Uninvited followed in 2016 on Create Control. In the Sky came in June 2018 through Dew Process and Nettwerk, and Driving Music in September 2019, which reached No. 10 on the ARIA albums chart.

The songs that did the lifting were "Groceries", which finished seventh in triple j's Hottest 100 for 2018 and has since been certified three times platinum in Australia, and "Charlie", which went one better and placed third the year after. "Better", "UFO" with Allday and "Nobody's Home" all reached platinum too. That is an unusual profile: a run of certified singles built up over four years before a debut album existed at all.

Butterfly Blue, then three years of sampling

The debut album, Butterfly Blue, arrived on 13 May 2022 and peaked at No. 6 on the ARIA chart. Around it sat a long list of guest appearances — with Allday, Basenji, Cub Sport and The Chainsmokers — plus a credit alongside BENEE on the official anthem for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, "Do It Again".

What came next took three years and a deliberate change of method. Speaking to Dork in December 2024, Shaw described building the record around light as a character, "this idea of magical realism in a suburban setting", and said she had been listening to the finished album daily since early 2024. The raw material was scavenged widely: Memphis rap samples, folk choir recordings, dance production in the Hudson Mohawke lineage, and traditional Gaelic singing. Her mastering engineer told her there was "a secret conspiracy that I'm actually making folk music disguised as pop music".

She also took up kickboxing while making it, and framed it as a writing tool rather than a hobby: "When you do a new combination, I always feel like I can feel those neuro pathways being created." The album title carries the same bruise.

Light Hit My Face Like a Straight Right

The second album was released on 14 February 2025 through Dew Process and Universal Music Australia. It runs 34 minutes. Five singles laid the ground first: "Ray of Light" on 23 August 2024, "Hocus Pocus" on 25 October, "Horses" on 6 December, "Pavement" on 17 January 2025 and "Hideaway" on 4 April. Styalz Fuego, Casey MQ and Alice Ivy are among the producers credited, with Shaw working across the record herself.

The reviews split. DIY gave it 3.5 out of five, Dork three. Far Out's Dale Maplethorpe went to 2.5 on 13 February 2025 and was blunt about why: the songs build but "this building sensation doesn't often go anywhere", with chopped vocals that he heard as placeholders rather than finished parts. He still singled out "Hocus Pocus" and "Hideaway". Other critics found the risk-taking worth the unevenness — drum and bass rhythms, a sample of the Finnish a cappella group Rajaton, an album that asks to be heard in one uninterrupted sitting.

The closing track is "Horses", written about her sister, who died in 2024. It has become the emotional pivot of the live show rather than a track people skip past.

The album was nominated for Best Pop Release and Best Solo Artist at the 2025 ARIA Awards, and for Australian Album of the Year at the 2025 J Awards.

Where she stands in 2026

The recognition that finally landed came for the work behind the desk. At the 2026 Queensland Music Awards, announced on 22 April, Shaw won the Producer award presented by APRA AMCOS — the category that treats her as the person who built the record, not the person who sang on it.

Since then she has stayed visible without putting out a new album. She played Vivid Sydney's Tumbalong Park on 22 May 2026, a free outdoor bill, and told Billboard around that time that the next project is genuinely undecided. "I have been playing with a more electronic sample-based direction," she said, "and then I've been playing with a more live indie direction and then I've also been like experimenting with some kind of indie folk stuff. So, what I need to figure out now is where to concentrate my energy." Three drafts of a third album, in other words, and no decision yet.

Her autumn 2026 diary runs through North America: the Salt Shed Outdoors in Chicago on 16 September, Under the K Bridge Park in Brooklyn on 19 September, two nights at the Coca-Cola Coliseum in Toronto on 22 and 23 September, and the Pepsi Center WTC in Mexico City on 1 October.

A career built in other people's rooms

Shaw has spent an unusual proportion of the last two years opening for other acts, and has been open about the trade: bigger rooms, shorter sets, audiences who did not buy a ticket for her. She supported Kylie Minogue on arena dates in Australia, and joined Marina's Princess of Power tour for a run of North American shows in autumn 2025 — Minneapolis on 15 September, Pittsburgh on 29 September, Austin on 5 October, Phoenix on 13 October — before taking the Sydney date at the Hordern Pavilion on 24 February 2026.

The rest of 2026 has been festival work on two continents: On the Banks at Brisbane's South Bank Cultural Forecourt on 26 February, A Day In The Gully in Adelaide on 28 February, Sips & Sounds at Auditorium Shores in Austin on 14 March, BASSINTHEGRASS at Mindil Beach in Darwin on 16 May, The Aussie BBQ at the Seaport in New York on 13 June, and Capitol Hill Block Party in Seattle on 8 August.

Her own headline run started at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney on 3 April 2025, the first headline shows she had played in two years, with Prophecy Girl, Denim and daine opening. It set the template the current sets still follow.