A Night In with Pixie McCann at Hyde Park Book Club
Image Credit: @lydthatpicstook on Instagram
Pixie McCann is an emerging artist of raw talent who leaves you ire to pick up a guitar and sing till your heart gives out, whether you are musically inclined or not.
Embarking on a first-ever headline tour at 21, McCann is climbing wildly to success from her London roots across the country. She began the tour for her recent EP Indigo, Vibrant, and New (2026) in October 2026, reaching various cities across the UK with her fabulous opener, Paul’s Daughter.
Paul’s Daughter describes herself as a “Victorian punk ballerina making melancholic rock whimsigoth tracks”, and I believe her self-appointed genre title describes her music perfectly. Her performance was bittersweetly short but left an everlasting mark on its audience. Her voice was transcendent and hypnotic, a perfect complement to the melodic hums from her guitar. Paul’s Daughter not only captured the audience’s attention with her beautiful voice but also with her warm personality.
As soon as she took the stage, she broke the ice with some comical comments surrounding her music. Specifically, how much she hates tuning her guitar, to the point that she took out a couple of songs to avoid doing so. Her whole set contained such heartbreakingly poised music that I wondered what songs she took out because, truthfully, I was dying for more.
There was a dual dynamic in the audience with Paul’s Daughter, as her music had us swaying side to side, singing along, then falling silent, almost scared we might miss a line. Halfway through her set, Paul’s Daughter invited everyone to sing along to her choir version of ‘Running Up That Hill (Deal with God)’ (1985). You could hear everyone’s voices melt into one with Paul’s Daughter as she led us through this very surreal experience. However, we all went quiet as she introduced her new unreleased song ‘England’. Her words expressed the desire for the Hollywood dream as an artist, but not wanting to leave where you’re from. Her song was layered with curiosity about what you’re giving up by keeping the feeling of home. This lyric struck me the most:
“If I go away / Get out of England / Would everything change / Could I be me again?”
It is so raw and honest to the true question aspiring artists need to ask: Is the risk of leaving everything I know behind worth it?
The answer to this question can only be found in experience, as remaining stagnant in its answer would deliver nothing but regret, this is what Paul’s Daughter attested to as well, admitting her awareness of what she has to do but wondering if she has the strength to do it.
With only a 45-minute set, Paul’s Daughter gave a very intimate performance that was nothing less than hauntingly beautiful. She has her new single ‘Rid of You’ (2026) and is actively writing her first EP, with a release announcement (hopefully) coming soon.
Soon after Paul’s Daughter departure, the stage was drenched in lime-green lighting with ambient music of bird calls as Pixie McCann walked across the stage, silent. I believe everyone, myself included, was too in awe to scream, cheer, or even breathe. She was like a teacher to us all, giving guidance and an escape to our darkest days through her music.
McCann made her debut in 2023 with her single ‘When Will You Learn (When Will You Grow)’, growing steadily in the years as she continued to be dedicated to releasing music on Spotify.
She remained hidden in an indie community of followers until a well-earned number of followers hit her page when she began teasing her new single ‘I Don’t Wanna Know’ (2024). McCann started to post videos to promote the single’s release date by using a looping machine, demonstrating how she records and layers her voice to create the song. This took McCann’s monthly listeners from 209 to 28.1k on Spotify, and she has not stopped growing since, currently at 213.3k. McCann created a Discord chat after the steady increase in her fandom titling it ‘Pixie Hollow’, where she discusses upcoming events and updates surrounding her music.
McCann continued to post videos in promotion of her new singles. In promotion of her self-produced single ‘Moth’, McCann gave her viewers an insightful deep dive into the narrative behind the song.
In a video on her TikTok platform, McCann described her use of the acronym “Moth” for the song’s title, as it stood for “‘me out of this hole,’ like ‘help me out of this hole.’” It’s a story of a depressive episode where McCann talked about the bitter envy one feels about people having more than you; “they’re thriving, and you’re surviving,” she stated.
The beginning of the song started with the layering of disrupted, chopped recordings of her voice, almost erratically. McCann wanted the song to start with layers of her voice to imitate whispers. Her vision behind this was “because a group of moths is called a whisper […] and also it sounds like the batting of wings.” Her whispers became a constant echo throughout the song.
McCann demonstrated this skill on stage with her loop sound machine in ‘Moth’ (2025), recording each vocal layer live for the audience.
She sang the lyric “he wanted me, and everything changed,” isolated by syllables, excluding ‘he,’ which was sung in three parts. The lyric read as such: “he, he, he, wan, ted, me, and ev, ry, thing, changed.” I think McCann’s sound manipulation of this line is quite theatrical and original. This unique way of making music was a sound I was not familiar with before. After diving deep into his discography, McCann’s signature sound is one I appreciate and applaud her for.
She followed this chopped reverb with another set of whispers in “help me out of this hole,” which followed a similar pattern to the previous lyric. She looped each lyric after the other, the two seemingly chasing one another, like her desire to get out is loud, but her ability does not reflect this wish. She layered the recordings together, making them the background chord for her main chorus as she proceeded to sing the line:
“You can try, helping me up / You can lose your grip / Then you’d be just as f-cked”
McCann’s performance of this line on stage was very energetic as she danced on stage, screaming into her microphone. It was such a drastic contrast to what her lyrics mean. In this line, you hear McCann acknowledge that no one can help her out of this hole but herself, and she is not ready to face that truth.
It’s a sad line; in fact, the entire song is quite sad and listening to it just by yourself is not as euphoric as hearing it live. Everyone was dancing and screaming this line back to McCann, and it felt uplifting, not sad. I think one of the great joys of music is musical-lyrical dissonance, the upbeat emotion you feel through the music clashing with the dark emotions of the words. McCann’s music is exactly that.
I believe McCann holds a kind of courage that gives her strength to sing about the human condition, exposing herself in ways some would never dare to do. There’s a true beauty in that. Pixie McCann is an inspiring and introspective artist whose music sounds ethereal and whimsical, much like her name. If you have not heard her music before, please do yourself a favour and give it a go.
Words by Liv Nivaud.