After a long National Final season consisting of five heats, on February 15th, 2025, Lithuania chose its representatives for the 2025 Contest. Katarsis’s ‘Tavo Akys’ achieved an unprecedented victory in Eurovizija.lt 2025, winning both the jury and the public vote and subsequently dominating the Lithuanian Spotify Charts. However, Katarsis’s bold presence in the Contest is revolutionary by itself – it opens the doors for Eastern European post-punk, a genrethat has never been seen before on the Eurovision stage.
Who are Katarsis?
Starting out as a solo project of the lead singer, Lukas Radzevičius, who began composing his own music in 2019 while still in high school, Katarsis is a post-punk and alternative rock band based in Vilnius.
They have since solidified their presence in the underground music scene in Lithuania over the years. The second single that the band put out in 2020 managed to enter the Lithuanian charts in 4th position. In 2024, Katarsis released their debut EP, Dausos.
Katarsis, the Lithuanian word for catharsis, has a clear link to the band’s main aim, with their dark alternative style putting listeners into a trance, transporting them to an ambient atmosphere surrounded by gloominess.
Each song takes the listener on a musical journey of ecstasy and rebirth, as Katarsis’s music is nothing short of thunderous, climactic and cathartic. Each piece has its own unique backstory and is a reflection of the Katarsis’s prominent post-punk identity, placing them in a strong niche within the broad and diverse Eastern European post-punk scene.
The Impact of Katarsis
At its core, the presence of Katarsis in the 2025 contest is revolutionary for genre diversity within Eurovision. Katarsis offers viewers more than just a song – they deliver a glimpse into the haunting and ‘undiscovered’ world of Eastern European post-punk, opening the door for a new genre in the Contest.
The entry’s striking visual and musical identity, paired with its seemingly monochrome aesthetic, is a deliberate contrast to the usual pop glamour Eurovision is usually associated with.
Lithuania’s 2025 entry ‘Tavo Akys’ (‘Your Eyes’) perfectly encapsulates the Eastern European perspective on the post-punk genre, a musical niche which can be found across Europe but is especially prominent in the Eastern part of the continent. Thus, a broader conversation arises – how does the sound of the genre in the former Eastern Bloc differ from the one in the Western hemisphere?
Eastern European kind of (post) Punk
Through the distinct brutalist sound, use of haunting melodies and lyrical content based on sorrow and longing, Katarsis offers a reflection of the post-Soviet reality of the former Eastern bloc.
Whilst it may seem foreign to the average Western viewer, the Post-Punk musical niche within which ‘Tavo Akys’ falls under has been gaining prominence in that part of Europe with the recent popularity of the Belarusian band Molchat Doma. The band has been making waves in the past couple of years amongst younger audiences with its distinct and heavy-hitting sound.
Furthermore, the National Final season this year saw the real possibility of having another Eastern European post-punk in the 2025 Contest. The band DK Enerhetyk competed in Ukraine’s National Final Vidbir 2025 with the song ‘Sil’. And despite only achieving sixth in the competition, this signals that the post-punk scene in Eastern Europe is ready to dip its toes into Eurovision.
While ‘Tavo Akys’ has not yet been found by that audience and it has not appeared as the sound accompanying thousands of videos showcasing Soviet panel blocks on TikTok, it offers a similar sound with a Baltic grit, which puts it in a league of its own. The back catalogue of Kataris further provides perfect examples of how the genre differs between countries, while also possessing every characteristic that makes Eastern European post-punk entirely different from its counterpart in Western Europe.
The Unique Identity of ‘Tavo Akys’
The Lithuanian entry represents a sonic portrait of contemporary Lithuania, steeped in existential introspection and emotional realism. Through the use of minimalistic instrumentation and anger-ridden vocals, ‘Tavo Akys’ evokes the greyness of the former Eastern bloc, transporting us back to the 90s when the post-punk genre gained its biggest prominence in the region. Thus, the entry reflects on the region’s emotional register that has been heavily shaped by the repressive history and many devastations it has faced in its fight for identity.
The Lithuanian entry with its unique lyrical content focuses on themes of destruction and pain. The opening lines, “Empty talks only fuel the fire / Houses are burning / They begin to collapse”, expressively paint a picture of devastation and a world full of meaningless words and unresolved conflicts which exacerbate the tension and built up anger within people.
The main symbol are the eyes, a symbol of pain within the context of the song. The lines “Your eyes see pain / Only gives a feeling to my eyes” establishes empathy and shared suffering as essential aspects of humanity. The person is somehow incapable of helping the other in their suffering; they can only stand and be a witness and feel sorrow and guilt. The lyrics “Don’t be afraid / In your dreams I cry / Only in your dreams I cry” reflect the hidden struggle of internal suffering, as the idea of crying in dreams could be seen as a metaphor for the pain that is suppressed in reality but that surfaces subconsciously. Sorrow is thus an unspoken shadow in their life.
‘Tavo Akys’ is an entry of trouble, hurt, sorrow and total emotional collapse. An entry which encapsulates the post-Soviet realism within Eastern European post-punk. Katarsis’ presence at Eurovision is therefore not only a musical shift, but a symbolic one — a long-overlooked subculture finally stepping into the European mainstream, carrying with it the raw voice of a region long on the margins.