Let’s be honest: any musician who says that they truly understand what a mastering engineer actually *does* is a dirty liar. Too often, when We Are Scientists get our mastered tracks returned, we’re not even really sure they’re any different — maybe they’re louder? Is there more low end? We could just be experiencing a placebo effect — for all we know, the engineer has simply renamed the WAV file and returned it, untouched. But when Katie masters our tracks, it’s like that moment in the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy emerges from her cyclonic wreckage and the film goes from drab black and white into glorious technicolor. Our music becomes a multi-hued wonderland of singing, dancing, and general revelry.  The fact that she’s highly genial, hugely professional, and whip-smart are simply icing on the cake — she has allowed us to identify the attributes of a keenly-mastered track, even if we remain woefully ignorant of the wizardry involved in the process.