"I often whisper the names of people who have wronged me into songs," says Pixie McCann, but crucially, she does not say whose. It could be anyone. (We're choosing to believe Dork isn't on the list - Ed.) On the morning she speaks to us, she is heading to her producer's studio to record drums on a new song called 'Mud', so somebody's name may be going headfirst under a snare as we go to press.
The year so far has not left much space for grudges, to be fair. There's been a deal with storied Black Butter Records, a debut EP in June and a first headline tour this autumn that finished at Hoxton Hall. Two years ago, she was doing the hard yards of pushing her own songs with no label and no manager.
'It's Pixie' is out today, and you may very well already have it filed as the most Pixie McCann song to date, on the fairly solid grounds that it has her name on it. Asked whether it is, she replies, "I would say not at all."
"I wrote this song two years ago, which makes it feel so distant and more importantly, the song is all about changing yourself to be accepted by someone," she explains. "I think it's kind of ironic that the song is literally called 'It's Pixie' and is about being anyone but."
"I often whisper the names of people who have wronged me into songs"
— Pixie McCann
The quotes that accompany the single's own notes call it a song about "the person, or people, I am when dating someone who doesn't think I'm enough. The things I'd do, the gross lengths I'd go to, to be wanted." The same notes announce a move away from the EP's "dreamier edges" towards something "explosive and direct". Her account of the move is somewhat shorter: "I don't think it was very intentional." The song, she says, "was produced far before the EP", and the volume arrived on its own. "I just started to produce the demo and went in quite a dark direction. Probably because the song feels quite dark to me." The loud song predates the dreamy ones it is meant to be a departure from.
The training for all of this, Dear Reader, happened on a pavement. Pixie picked up a guitar at eleven and started busking the same year, in a city where the folk and trad sessions are part of the furniture. "I think busking is the best, most humbling thing I've ever done," she says. "It made me fall in love with performing and forced me to not care when the audience doesn't."
The loop pedal shares an origin story. "It all just sort of happened. I started looping to compete with bands when I was busking. So I just kept it up." She still does. Live, those loud songs get built one layer at a time, a guitar figure laid down and left running, a vocal stacked on top, a beat where she can get one, with the crowd watching every step. It is the busking set-up on a stage with a door on it.
Producing followed the same 'needs must' logic. "It honestly started out of necessity," she explains. "I couldn't afford to pay a producer, so I ended up playing around with GarageBand. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with producing." Every single she released in 2024 she wrote, produced and put out herself. Then Black Butter signed her, and Joel Pott, once of 00s chart botherers Athlete, produced the EP and co-wrote its opener.
That EP is 'Indigo, Vibrant and New', dropped back at the start of summer. 'Déjà Vu' opens it, and started life as a voice note recorded at five in the morning with the birds going outside. The finished version keeps the hush of that voice note under Pott's production: picked guitar, the vocal sat forward and sung at the volume of someone trying not to wake the house, a chorus that lifts rather than hits. 'Rotting', which came out ahead of the EP in May, works the same way, drums held back and the voice doubled and soft, so the title does most of the shouting.
"Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with producing"
— Pixie McCann
'It's Pixie' does not work that way, though. The drums are up in the mix from the first bar, the guitars distort where the EP's shimmered, and the vocal holds steady and close while everything around it gets louder. The person in the lyric stays small while the sound does not, a fair arrangement for a song about the "gross lengths" of the notes. It is the best thing she has put out, and the demo was hers alone, on GarageBand, before anyone with a studio was involved.
Her influences outside music are films and television. MANIAC, the Netflix series in which two strangers on a pharmaceutical trial end up sharing each other's drug-induced realities, "honestly changed my way of thinking", she says, and it is not a long walk from there to a single about becoming someone else for a person who doesn't rate you. Then she overrules herself. "I would say I'm mostly just influenced by my life, the shit I go through." The whispered names, presumably, included. "I am consistently in awe of The Howl and the Hum," she says (Sam Griffiths, on his own these days), "who is one of my favourite artists of all time. I mean, of course Olivia Rodrigo!"
She bills it as weird music for weird girls. "I guess it's just giving permission to the weirdos to claim my songs," she says. "I was odd as frick in school and very few things felt like they were for me. I didn't feel allowed to have them. This is my way of inviting those people in, not only are they included, it's specifically for them." Put that next to the single with her name on it, a song about shrinking to fit one person, and the dates matter. The shrinking song came first.
Folklore in March to Hoxton Hall in October is seven months and a short walk, the two venues sharing a corner of Hoxton, with four more headline dates, one EP and one Paris support slot in between. "If I'm honest, there hasn't been any time to slow down and reflect," she says. "I'm sure that around Christmas, after the Paris tour, I'll have an 'omg that just happened' moment." The Paris in question is Paris Paloma, and the realisation is booked in for the festive period. At least that is organised.
That run starts 11th November. The Fatal Flaw Tour takes Paris Paloma across the UK, to Dublin and then into Europe, with Pixie opening, including Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht on 30th November and the Paradiso in Amsterdam the night after. Asked what she is looking forward to, she offers "everything" and then gets specific. "I've heard amazing things about her fanbase and how kind and welcoming they are." The European stretch is largely new ground, she says. "I've never really gone to any of the places before." The best part of a decade's training in being ignored, and the crowd is reportedly lovely.
"I was odd as frick in school"
— Pixie McCann
The admin has not caught up. "I still haven't been able to do any laundry from tour," she admits. "When I have a spare second, I play guitar. I have a large goal to have more spare time next year." (Same - Ed.) "I think my most magical songs are created in time."
Pressed on 2027, she offers "more shows, more songs, just more" before narrowing it down. "What I do know is I'm going to be more human. In my music, in my life, in everything."
The eleven-year-old with the guitar and the pitch gets two options, she reckons. "She could absolutely freak out and scream and bounce around," she says, "or she could just say 'well, of course'. I think 11 might have been the last age I truly, completely believed in myself, and I believe it came back at 20."
There are seven weeks between Hoxton Hall and the Paradiso. Somebody's name needs to go under a snare, and a bag of tour washing needs to go in the machine, before Amsterdam.
Pixie McCann's single 'It's Pixie' is out 23rd October.
