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Nov 06, 2025 By Caleb Campbell

Seattle-based indie rock band Pansy first began as a lo-fi home recording outlet for singer/songwriter and guitarist Vivian McCall. After getting her start as a multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer with Chicago’s retro-pop outfit Jungle Green, McCall debuted as Pansy in 2021 with her self-titled full-length album, offering a diaristic emotional inventory of her transition. Since then, the band has coalesced into a quartet, with guitarist Liz Perlman, drummer MJ Harbarger, and bassist Syd Brownstone joining McCall.

Tomorrow, the band are reintroducing themselves with their new EP, Skin Graft. They have already shared a pair of singles from the EP, “Mercy, Kill Me” and “Walk Dangerous (Chasers),” and today they’re sharing an early listen to one of the EP’s unheard highlights, “Dark Star,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Dark Star” finds the band settling in for a simmering, folk-tinged slow-burn, letting the track gradually transform from a solitary confessional into a spikey and turbulent storm of guitar feedback. McCall wraps her vocals in chiming acoustic tones, lilting as hints of bass, percussion, and mellotron steadily seep into the instrumentation. Midway through, layer upon layer of guitars come crashing in, dominating the mix and adding a newfound barbed texture as the chord progression and lyrics repeat in a loop: “I thought I’d find the answer / To my, to my favorite question / Exhausted all of my options / Today, today, today.” The results are equal parts anxious and entrancing, bolstering McCall’s elliptical song structure with sweeping and satisfying waves of distortion.

That repeating lyrical element is meant to mirror the exhausting thought spirals of living with OCD. As McCall explains, “‘Dark Star’ is about the endless, exhausting mental loop of OCD, which I’ve struggled with since I was a kid. Thoughts tend to take hold of you and never let go. The structure basically mirrors that. Lyrics are repeated. They double over themselves. These thought patterns are a cycle of anxiety and relief. The relief comes in the chorus, where the plodding tension just drops out. I didn’t do any of that intentionally! It was totally organic, and I just reinforced those feelings with layers of guitar and mellotron.”

Check out the song below. The Skin Graft EP is out on November 7th via Earth Libraries.