Pansy on their new EP and Chicago’s Sharp Pins
In Our Headphones
KEXP
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Vivian McCall of Pansy joins producer Lilly Ana Fowler to talk about their new EP Skin Graft and recording music as a transgender artist. They also talk about one of her favorite Chicago acts, Sharp Pins, and their new track “I Can’t Stop," from the album Radio DDR released on K Records subsidiary Perennial. Pansy is having a record release party at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle on Wednesday, December 3rd.
Hosted by Evie Stokes
Produced by Lilly Ana Fowler
Mastered by: William Myers
Production support: Serafima Healy
Associate Director of Editorial: Dusty Henry
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | K-E-XP streaming is made possible by BloodWorks Northwest, announcing the Musics in |
| 0:05.0 | Our Blood campaign, seeking 10,000 new and returning blood donors. |
| 0:09.5 | Appointments and more at bloodworks nw.org slash music. Music's in our blood. |
| 0:15.0 | From independent music station, K-E-X-P, you're listening to In Our Headphones, a podcast about |
| 0:20.7 | the songs we just can't get enough of |
| 0:22.5 | lately. This is Lillianna Fowler, and this week I'm filling in for Evie Stokes. I'm talking to |
| 0:27.9 | Vivian McCall of Pansy. Tell us about yourself and Pansy. So Pansy is a four-piece rock band that I started as a solo project in Chicago. |
| 0:41.3 | I made a record a few years ago right before I moved out here. |
| 0:44.9 | I've written songs like since I was a teenager and then I was like in my early 20s and just kind of had this like huge backlog of music, but had mostly sort of been, you know, |
| 0:58.9 | after high school playing in other people's projects. |
| 1:01.8 | And I had just sort of started transitioning and the songs started changing really significantly. |
| 1:09.1 | Like they were a lot more clear because I felt like I had a lot to say. |
| 1:13.7 | And I was feeling and experiencing a lot and my life was, like, changing so rapidly. |
| 1:19.1 | So the songs really started just pouring out. |
| 1:22.5 | Now it's pretty exciting because I have this new EP that I recorded out at like in Anacortis like at the |
| 1:28.1 | unknown studio which is like this amazing church like tons of bands in the area of recorded there |
| 1:33.0 | and um you know I'm already like working on the next record and it just it all kind of feels like |
| 1:39.5 | it's happening now which is really exciting cool and so would you say that your first record, the music that was |
| 1:46.7 | coming out of you was about transitioning? Yeah, absolutely. And now this record, what would you say |
| 1:53.3 | is the inspiration for this second record? Well, the inspiration is more like, you know, a lot of my songs deal with being trans, because that's just |
| 2:02.9 | like what I am. Like all songwriter songs are just about like their lives. And I feel like, |
| 2:10.1 | you know, when you transition, it's this huge momentum in your life. It's like this, you know, |
... |
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