Interview: PYNKIE beacons through a lo-fi haze

PYNKIE‘s voice floats through a blurry haze. It’s like taking a nap in TV static — both crunchy and soothing. In a song like “Plz,” drums chew up the scenery with PYNKIE (real name Lindsey Radice) embroidering the edges with her emotionally galvanizing vocal tricks. She tinkers with the melody, sitting comfortably in her middle range with clarity and calm. It’s unfussy yet completely intentional. When she utters a word, it’s with enough weight to zap you awake.

With the original intent to write a fast song, “Plz” was born out of a demo drum beat Radice conjured on Ableton set to 170bpm (beats per minute) with a simple chord progression laid on top. The singer-songwriter “then layered that with the main riff that I originally wrote with my Casio CA-110 keyboard and I loved the feel of it,” Radice tells B-Sides & Badlands. “It inspired me to get into the headspace of this character I made up: a girl at a party with her toxic bf, contemplating their relationship and realizing the toxicity of it but wanting to make it work. I have been that girl in the past, maybe not in that exact imagined situation but similarly enough.”

The newly-released visual, directed by Evan Deng, juxtaposes such an emotional depth against playful imagery of toys. “I love the video concept so much and feel like it matches the feel of the song so well! I originally wanted the video to take place at a house party,” she says, “but I ended up using that idea for the “Crushed Out” video instead, which makes a cameo appearance in the background of this video, too!”

While she couldn’t nail out a good video idea herself, Deng brought the concept to the table, and the team ran with it. “That was actually my first time meeting him and his PA, Jade, and they were both so nice and easy to work with,” continues Radice. “I would say I learned that working with new people on creative projects is always a good idea because you never know what beauty can come out of it.”

“Plz” samples a forthcoming record titled Songies, expected August 18. With the new album, which also includes “Unsee” and “Spiral,” Radice pieces together songs that are “cohesive and flow together in a more album-like fashion than my previous albums,” she says. “I also wanted to demonstrate certain motifs in the tracks — like the fact that most of them are short, sweet, and to the point with an element of weirdness, while also being very song-like (i.e. the classic ‘verse, chorus, verse, maybe bridge’-type structure).”

Interestingly, that’s how she defines the word “songy” or “songies,” on which the album’s moniker is based. “I’ve also been calling my songs ‘songies’ since I first started making them, so I felt like it had to be the name of one of my albums — and it’s surprisingly never been used before as far as I can find!”

Below, Radice talks about heartbreak, influences, creating her sound, and songwriting growth.

What have you learned most from love and heartache?

If it wasn’t for love and heartache, I probably would never have written any “real” songs! [laughs] When I first started making songs, I just did it as a joke and could not take the lyric writing part seriously at all; so I would write songs about things like cup noodles and stuff – yes that is me! [laughs] Then I made my first lil love song and realized how fun it is to be vulnerable like that. Love and heartache both come with intense feelings and introspection, which I’ve thankfully been able to sublimate into songies.

When have you felt “chaos and composure” in a relationship?

I’ve been in my fair share of “toxic” relationships in the past! I finally found a goodie who I’ve been with since early 2020 who’s also my keyboardist/synth player/producer. In those past toxic relationships, I rarely told people what was really going on and usually just pretended everything was ok. So the “chaos” was what I was privately experiencing and the “composure” is what I would give off publicly.

What’s been the hardest fall for you in life?

Honestly, my overall life has been pretty good, probably because I set low expectations for myself and am a generally happy/positive person. But over the past couple years or so, for some reason that remains a mystery, my ECZEMA has been so goddamn bad to the point where I had to go to the hospital a couple times because it was all over my body and I could barely move! It was beyond severe, especially toward the end of last year and the beginning of this year. I’ve come to believe that it is due to something called “topical steroid withdrawal,” due to years of misuse/abuse of topical steroids and then trying to get off them. I am now totally off steroids and on a “biologic response modifier” called Dupixent since February of this year, and it has cleared it up like 90 percent, thankfully! However, it still flares up around my eyes which is why I rarely wear eye makeup and often wear sunglasses (even indoors) as my “makeup.”

Musically, your work is like taking a nap in TV static. Aesthetically, how did you set about sculpting this sound for yourself?

[laughs] I’m not really sure what you mean by that but I love it! I love the fact that songs/music can be interpreted in endless ways depending on the listener! The type of music I listen to most is ’90s-’00s alternative/indie rock and newer stuff that is inspired by that type of music. I believe that what I listen to is what helps sculpt the sound of what I make. To get a better idea of what that is, here’s a playlist I’ve made of music that either has inspired or matches the feel of the upcoming album.

In that way, what records do you find have influenced you most as a musician?

Especially for this upcoming album, records that have influenced me the most are:

I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day by Julie Doiron | Favorite track: “Lovers Of The World”

Totally Crushed Out by ‘that dog.’ | Favorite track: “She Doesn’t Know How”

The Wayward Bus / Distant Plastic Trees by The Magnetic Fields | Favaorite track: “Dancing in Your Eyes”

Would you ever go full-time in your music career?

Oh man, I honestly don’t know how that would ever be possible! [laughs] Especially since I need good health insurance to cover this crazy expensive med I have to be on right now, which would cost like $4k a month without insurance! Life, in general, is soo expensive, and it would take a lot of fame, and I don’t even know what else to make a good living off of music (as far as I know). But besides that, I genuinely do enjoy and take pride in my work as a registered nurse. I’m directly helping people in one of the most important ways possible, and I feel like they need me kinda! So besides the fact that it brings home the bacon and gives me health insurance [laughs], I don’t think I’d ever wanna completely call it quits with nursing, even if I were to somehow “blow up” in the music industry! I also love that I have time to do both, since I work three 12-hour shifts per week and have the other four days to write songs, play shows, etc.!

What have you learned most in the last five years since “Dew”?

I actually released the “lo-fi” (AKA pitched down/slightly sped up) version of “Dew” back in March 2018 on SoundCloud just randomly! But then it started getting a lot of plays/likes, so I decided to upload it to all streaming sites including Spotify, where it now has over 1.6 million streams! I honestly can’t believe that [laughs], and none of my other songs have been that successful since, even when I released my second album with a label that did a pretty decent promo job for me! It’s hilarious to me [laughs] That song was also written in like 2016 when I was obsessed with Mac DeMarco. [laughs] So, even the rest of the first album ‘neoteny’ is not really like that song since the rest were written in 2017-2018 when I started listening to more ’90s/’00s alt-rock stuff. My music taste has changed so much since writing “Dew,” and I honestly don’t wanna make more Mac DeMarco-esque songs like that, even though people love it! I don’t know if that’s selfish or what [laughs] but I like my new direction much more, and I appreciate the fans with my same niche taste who support my other music and have stuck around to this day!

How has your songwriting changed?

Over the years — especially when writing this new album and in songs I’m currently writing — I’ve become more creative in terms of using different time signatures, alternate tunings, and just trying to come up with more interesting melodies and unpredictable changes in my songs’ structures. Songwriting is an ongoing evolutionary process for me and is pretty much my favorite thing to do ever!

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