Interview with CCTV

February 17, 2026

On January 21, we had the chance to chat with Sean (vocals) and Jocelyn (bass) from the Auckland-based punk band CCTV. 

The five-piece put out their incredible debut EP, Austerity Blues, about a year ago (Feb. 6, 2025), and followed that up with Watch, a three-track EP, in November. 

Ahead of plans to drop their debut album in 2026, they chatted with Dominick about how the band came together, the New Zealand housing crisis—a recurring theme in their music—and give a hint of what to expect on their first full-length. 

Watch the interview below! And follow @cctvtheband to get the latest updates on their upcoming record!

Dominick: Hey y'all, Dominick here for BLIGATORY. I'm joined by CCTV, out of Auckland, New Zealand, one of my absolute favorite newer bands. They put out their first EP about a year ago, Austerity Blues, and it is as good as they come. They put out another three tracks in November, and the debut album will be out sometime in 2026. Super excited for this interview, thanks for taking the time to chat. Do you all want to introduce yourselves?

Sean: Hi, I'm Sean. I do the vocals and the songwriting for the band.

Jocelyn: Hi, I'm Jocelyn. I'm the bassist.

Dominick: Awesome. So who are we missing, and what's the story of you know, how the band came together? And how'd you all meet?

Sean: We’re missing Eve, who does the guitar, Amos, who does keys, and then Maxine, who is our drummer and also writes songs.

Sean: I’m trying to think of how it came together. Like, two-ish years ago, we were at our flat, and like, all of us are kind of big music heads. So, you know, we're always talking about what we're listening to and what was going on. And I think at one point someone was just like, “man, we should start a band, bro.”

Jocelyn: That was you.

Sean: Oh, okay, cool. So, originally, the band was three of our flatmates trying to put it together. And then we were like, “Shit, we don't know any drummers. This sucks.” And then we met a drummer, Maxine, like a month later. So it just kind of worked out. And now they live here as well, which is cool.

Dominick: So were they in a different part of New Zealand, or where did they come from?

Jocelyn: They had recently immigrated from Hong Kong to study here in New Zealand. So, yeah, we'd met them through one of our other friends, who also lived in Hong Kong for a while and then came to New Zealand for their degree as well. And then, after we met Maxine, one of the original members went to Wellington to study film. Eve was already one of our friends at the time, and she played guitar. And we were like, we can have Eve come along! We also already knew Amos, who is one of our friends from school.

Sean: Apart from Maxine, pretty much everyone went to school together, which is cool. Jocelyn picked up the bass for the band, like, she didn't play instruments before we started, which is pretty cool.

Dominick: Cool. So, you said a source of inspiration was just, all being music heads and talking about different music. So my next question is related to a comment left on the Bandcamp page for Watch that references the AK79 New Zealand punk era, and I've been given that album some burn the past few days. I was wondering if that is something you all are fans of or influenced by, and maybe some other recommendations you want to give to someone looking to learn more about the Auckland music scene, whether that be historical or current?

Sean: Yeah, for sure. I think AK79 is a really good place to start. It is a really great overview of a bunch of bands at the time. The best thing for anyone trying to get into New Zealand music is this awesome website called AudioCulture, which is just like pages and pages of essays on different bands from throughout the years. Because it's a really small country, so everyone knows each other, and getting testimony or interviews is, like, really easy.

[talking to Jocelyn] I actually, I don't know if I've ever told you this story…

I don't know if it’s on AK79, but there's this pretty famous, or maybe famous in New Zealand, song [by Proud Scum] called “Suicide 2.” There's a bridge here in Auckland called Grafton Bridge, and the chorus is like, “jump off Grafton bridge.” And my best mate was chatting about it at a friend's house, and then his dad came out and was like, “Yeah, I played guitar on that song.” Yeah, but definitely AudioCulture and AK79 are really good places to start.

Dominick: Yeah, I'll definitely look into that. I wrote that down because, like I said, I've been checking out AK79. I know The Beths are from Auckland as well. But outside of that, not too familiar, but obviously you guys have some great stuff, The Beths are great. AK79 is good. So, so far, pretty good track record. And then my next question is, how'd you settle on the name CCTV? I know the issue of mass surveillance that kind of looms over all of us, is something that's come up in some of your music. I'd love to hear some thoughts on that, and whether or not there's any alternative meaning or significance behind the name, or if that's kind of the driving force.

Sean: Back when we were in school, I was in another band that was like a psych rock band or something. And when we were picking the name for that, I was texting my mate Seb, and I was like, “Bro, we can't think of any band names, give us a band name”. And one of the ones he sent was CCTV. And I was like, “That sounds awesome.” And I was like, we should do that. And then the person running the band was like, “No, they'll think we're like, a government, or a company or something.”

And then when the band finally came around, I was like, “Okay, cool, we can, we can use that.” In terms of surveillance, it’s something that I think about a lot. The thing in regards to it that's on my mind a lot of the time is we have a lot of, like, kind of soft surveillance system around us all the time, right? I think with everyone having a recording device on them at all times, a lot of people are afraid that they are constantly under threat of being recorded. It's kind of like panopticon or something. And I think that does some really not good things to how people are willing to express themselves.

Jocelyn: Yeah, I get what you're getting at. I think it will change the way people behave. If it was less fundamental, if it wasn't around, I feel like people would act differently.

Dominick: Yeah. Definitely something there with, you know, just the…I think there's a rise of people worried about embarrassing themselves, because everything can be caught on film at a moment's notice. And it's interesting to think about everyone having a recording device. Like, I cover up my webcam just for the hell of it, because who knows. And then it's like, I take it off to talk to you, and now it’s being recorded. But yeah, along with that, I'd say a lot of your music and the lyrics are relatively straightforward and to the point with its messaging. But one of my favorites on Austerity Blues, “big wheels,” is a little bit different. I don't have a reference for how car-centric it is in New Zealand, but like, at least from an American perspective, I think “big wheels” perfectly satirizes the most obnoxious and egotistical of our drivers, especially when we talk about the prevalence of trucks here, but with it being delivered in a scathing manner from the perspective of someone like that, I'd just love to hear more about what inspired that specific song and how writing for it might have had a bit of a different process than some others, if that's the case?

Sean: It's pretty similar here in a lot of ways. We've got a big–probably not quite as bad as the states–but a big car culture here, a lot of four by fours, a lot of headlights that are totally blinding. And it's a very entitled car culture, you know? People feel that having a road everywhere is like a God given right.

From what I remember, it came along because I read this stat that, there's like a blind zone in front of a car right where you can see to the edge of the bonnet and then there's a blind zone right in front. And with a regular car, it's like one child wide. And in front of those four by fours, it's like 11 children wide. Like, there's such a huge blind spot there that anything shorter than, like, I don't know, five foot, is just totally invisible. It's just crazy.

It was also kind of politically relevant at the time. One of the big Progressive-Conservative divides are, like “We should build more roads,” “We should build more cycle ways,” or whatever. And it's one of these super partisan issues that seems to endlessly come up.

Jocelyn: Yeah, it was really big at the time. It was one of the main political talking points.

Sean: Final note on that is, the people who tend to push for that sort of thing, and unfortunately, tend to be the most politically active, in seems like any country, are older, wealthier people. One of the first lines on the chorus is, “Driving down Main Street Remmers.” Remmers, or Remuera, is one of the richest suburbs in the city we live in, and like, a famously rich suburb.

Dominick: Yeah, definitely some similarities here as well, Not really much advocating for public transport here. It's definitely very much more, more cars, more trucks. Definitely a big issue of people taking just the base trucks that are already, you know, have that poor line of sight that you were talking about, and then further raising them and having lifted trucks. It gets a little ridiculous at times here,

Sean: And it's like, there's some justification for it sometimes, because we are a dairy farming country, that is what keeps the country afloat. But most of the people driving the trucks are not dairy farmers, right? They're like, suburban moms, you know?

Dominick: Yeah. I also did a little research in thinking about that question. I was honestly surprised, I think it was the Ford Ranger or something, is like one of the best selling cars. And I don't know, I think of big trucks as such a uniquely American thing that I was just surprised to hear that they seem to be growing in popularity elsewhere.

Sean: Yeah, I think it's one of those things as well that can only be solved through being regulated. From like talking to regular people about it–like, not insane car guys specifically–but normal people who also happen to do this, the one thing I hear a lot is that they're kind of stuck in this, like, car arms race, where if they're driving like a normal car and they get hit by a Ford Ranger, they're like, obliterated. But if they're also in a Ford Ranger, then I don't know, maybe their kids aren't, like, turned into mist, you know? And like, you can't really solve that without just banning, or at least restricting those kinds of vehicles to the people who actually might need them, right? I don't know, that seems reasonable to me that you don't want your kids to be killed in a car accident, but it's unfortunate that they have to do that.

Dominick: My other question relating to, like, New Zealand politics–that I did some looking into, but obviously a lot to learn, I still pretty much know nothing. But I really wanted to look into some of the main points and themes of your song “mp” and I found some reporting the New Zealand Herald that said members of parliament have stakes in a combined $379 million of property in New Zealand, which doesn't sound far off from the type of corruption that exists over here, and seemingly everywhere, unfortunately. And that type of asset hoarding is also at the heart of “NO BARONS,” which came out a few months ago. Also a fantastic song. Is there a concerted effort to address these issues and put that messaging into your music, or is it more just the natural outcome of living in these conditions that, of course they come up and are reflected in the stuff you write about?

Sean: I would say it's one of the things that there's a concerted effort towards. A lot of the songs, when we write them, it's just like, an idea comes up, and then we write them in, like, an hour or two. It's like, you go fishing and a fish pops up, you know? Housing here is so fucked. It's so bad, for so many reasons.

Hopefully it comes across on “mp,” but you have this situation where every member of parliament has an interest in this problem not being solved, and a significant part of the voting population also doesn't want it solved, right?

We have a kind of unique environment here. A lot of countries have either a land value tax or a capital gains tax, and we have neither. There are taxes for buying and selling houses, but they're relatively small. So like, purely from an economic perspective, investing in housing here is like the best deal around, right? Like it's such a good deal that you would be kind of stupid to invest in anything else, right? Which is real bad, because speculating on housing and investing in housing doesn't seem to be a very good way of actually getting people to live in it, right?

Prices just go up and up and up. It's something you would hope that our left wing parties would be moving to address, but our major center-left party, like all of them, own just as many properties. So it doesn't really seem to be something that they're interested in sorting anytime soon.

And then the other thing, with “NO BARONS” specifically, I was reading this really long article about the state of homelessness in New Zealand. And we have…I don't even know what would be considered as a percentage as “bad homelessness” or whatever, but what stunned me was, they were looking at how could we address this, or how could we try and fix this situation, and help people get into homes? And they got this American homelessness expert over and he looked at the figures and he was like, “In Wellington, the capital…you have like 700 homeless people. That's a solvable amount to deal with. Where I come from, we have like 20,000 people, you know?”

Rambling a lot here, but the thing that's frustrating is it's not even a case that we don't have the means to solve it. We do have the means to solve it here, we could do it. It would be both socially–and even if you want to be really cynical–economically positive, but there's no will to do it. No one wants to, there's no interest. And that really sucks.

Jocelyn: I remember you sent me the article, yeah. And it was kind of heartbreaking, because in the grand scheme of things, the amount of money that they would need in order to solve the homelessness issue in Wellington–I can't remember the exact amount–it wasn't even that much money.

Sean: Yeah, again, if you want to put on your cynical economic hat…it's expensive to have people be in mental health crises all the time, and they need a lot of support. You know, those people aren't living happy lives, but they're contributing to society. Like, having people be homeless is more expensive than just supporting them and helping them. I don't know, it's just really frustrating. And then, you know, it's ethically good to not have people live on the fucking streets in our country. I don't know.

Dominick: Yeah, I think there's a lot of a similar themes going on here. Even outside the issues of housing, it's like, we produce more than enough food for people, but so much of it gets wasted, and yeah, it’s very frustrating. I think your music really captures that frustration in a very succinct way. How do you see just regular, everyday, normal people, or even artists specifically, building towards a better future and making transformative changes, where we have, like, a better set of ethics and actually care about addressing these issues in a way they currently are not being addressed?

Jocelyn: Good question. It's a tricky one, because we've [referring to Sean] talked about, like, our opinions on the current activism scene before.

Sean: It's really hard, basically, is the gist of my thoughts. It’s kind of a complicated feeling, because like, it seems looking at the past however many years, kind of seems like artists can't do very much. There's this quote from Kurt Vonnegut, during the Vietnam War, all artists were like a laser beam, against the Vietnam War, and it was like throwing a custard pie off a step ladder…it didn't do anything. You hope that your messaging, or what you're saying is registering or sitting in people's brains and making change that way. But, I don't know, right?

Jocelyn: It's hard to see art contributing to any actual sort of change. I feel like doing things by action is probably more impactful.

Sean: To balance it out, to be positive, like, I can't speak to anyone else's experience. But I know, listening to music and dealing with people's thoughts, ideas, and experiences have personally helped me have a better understanding of the issues in the world around me, right? It's one thing to hear shit on the news, and it's another thing to hear someone who is dealing with that sort of situation or event, express their experience through art. I also think there's like a lot to be done with music as a kind of rallying tool. I think we've seen an interesting uptick recently of benefit shows and shows to support charity or local aid groups. I've been seeing a lot of that in the States recently in response to the ICE raids, that's fucking awesome. I think if people, if artists, want to make real, observable change, they probably have to look beyond the music itself, like it's not enough basically, you have to use that as a vehicle to go further.

Jocelyn: I'm just thinking back on what I said, I realized that music and art do have an important part in playing awareness and perspective, like you [Sean] said. Although I'm not big on Banksy's work, his recent…

Sean: I fuckin’ hate Banksy.

Joceyln: Yeah, I'm not big on it either, but what should I call it? His painting outside, was it London parliament? I can't remember where it was, but the one with the judge hitting a protester. I think it was pretty big for awareness and stuff. It got really highly covered.

But, I don't know stuff like that is pretty good when it can be, but I feel like it needs to be taken a step further. You can't just make art or music and expect change to come from it.

Sean: When people are like, “Yeah, I just make the music and what people do with it, that's up to them.” It's like, you fuckin’ loser, go put on a show or something, it's not that hard. We've done like 30 shows and it takes like two weeks of planning. It's not that hard, it's pretty easy to do. So if people want to do stuff, they should organize a little bit.

Dominick: Yeah, I think all that was well said. Obviously, yeah, it takes more than just the music, especially, talking with all these complicated issues. But you know, I think music as a whole, influenced my political beliefs, even from a young age. And I think even nowadays, again, your guys' music, it's opening my eyes to, you know, the other side of the world. It's like a lot of these same issues are affecting the same types of people and the same issues are just so prevalent, and that's very powerful and can be very inspiring to people, even over here on the other side of the world. So, to wrap things up with what you are doing, more about your art, and putting it out there, any additional details on the debut album coming out that you want to share? You don't have to give the whole thing away. But I'm very excited for it, and I know, sometime in 2026!

Sean: I'm super excited. I'm like, totally, what would the phrase be? I'm like, totally wage-cucked at the moment, like, nine-to-five, and all day at my job it's like the one thing that keeps me from putting my head in the microwave: “I gotta get the album out.”

We're recording it next month, like the end of next month, and then it should be out three-ish months later, depending on when we get our shit together. I think it’s going to be really cool.

What I can say about it is it's got a wider lens than Austerity Blues. It's less New Zealand focused. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the death of empire, right? Because it kind of seems like…I don't really believe people when they say America is going to collapse, like, in this year, it takes a long time for an institution to buckle, but it seems like this era of America being the internationally dominant empire across the whole world and influencing everyone's economic and social policy, that seems like it's kind of ending, right? And I’ve been thinking a lot about that. So, the album is going to be more about imperialism and the consequences of empire, and stuff like that. It’ll be cool.

Jocelyn: I think people will be into it.

Sean: Still got a lot of the same frantic energy and stuff, but also, I think we’re doing more structurally and conceptually ambitious stuff this time.

Dominick: Yeah, you’re definitely not wrong. Probably for the better, U.S. imperialism not as dominant as it once was. Definitely something I think about a lot as well. I’m excited to see how that is incorporated into y’all’s debut album. Looking forward to it. Thank you so much for taking the time today–anyone watching this [or reading it], listen to Austerity Blues, listen to Watch, and if you’re listening to this in the future and the debut is out by then, go listen to that as well.