On a sunny Saturday in March, I pay a visit to Big Girl bandleader Kaitlin Pelkey and guitarist Crispin Swank at their charming Ridgewood apartment. Walking into their front parlor—and makeshift home recording studio—I immediately notice a vinyl copy of the Slits’ Cut sitting on top of a record player. The seminal punk album makes perfect sense as an influence for Big Girl, a band not only enamored with all things over-the-top and in-your-face, but a band that understands how even the most invigorating sounds aren’t always the most polished or palatable. Big Girl are more than capable of churning out a call-and-response pop song when they feel like it, too. Girl group-y backing vocals on “Cadillacs” taunt, “Do you liiiiiiiiiiike itttttt?” Then, Pelkey spits back: “Yeah! It’s like sugar on my teeth. It’s like eating a magazine. It’s better than sex! Better than TV!”
Big Girl’s 2024 debut Big Girl vs. God was an eight-song rock opera calling to mind the power ballads of the ’70s and ’80s—artists like Heart, Roxette, and Pat Benatar—shrunk down into scratchy, DIY proportions. The record favored electrifying vocal harmonies, loud-quiet instrumental builds, and lighting-rod guitar licks, as Pelkey’s voice expanded to fill out dive bars and basement venues. But I’ve no doubt that it could one day find itself all the way up in the cheap seats of arenas. The album title was originally meant to only be the band’s website URL. It was their small, jokey way of “sticking it to the monolith of the music industry,” to use Swank’s exact words. “Not that we stand a chance,” he adds, in a voice so soft it’s almost a whisper. “But we’re gonna do some ass-kicking.”
If Big Girl vs. God was a glam-rock album on a punk budget, their new EP DYE positions the ever-theatrical Pelkey (backed by their merry band of ass-kickers) as the People’s Pop Star. It’s the kind of EP that can—and should—find its way into the headphones of kids raised on Avril Lavigne and Hayley Williams (or, if they’re a bit younger, Olivia Rodrigo). Recorded partially in Pelkey and Swank’s home studio and partially in Northampton, Massachusetts—and co-produced by both Swank and Justin Pizzoferatto (Dinosaur Jr., Pixies, Speedy Ortiz)—DYE is five back-to-back bangers, a sugar rush with no crash. “Jael [Holzman, of the DC punk band Ekko Astral] calls it ‘the sizzle reel,’” Pelkey laughs.
Holzman is the one I have to thank for putting me onto Big Girl last year. When she first sent me the EP in early 2025, she described it as “punk rock Chappell Roan,” and her assessment is about as glowing and accurate as any. Later this spring, Big Girl will take the stage at Liberation Weekend, Ekko Astral’s trans rights benefit music festival in Washington, D.C. When I meet Pelkey and Swank, they’re preparing for their trip to Austin to play Paste’s annual South By Southwest showcase at High Noon. Between these high-profile shows and the ongoing rollout for their EP, it’s shaping up to be a Big Year for Big Girl.
The songs on DYE are all about transformation, rebirth, and taking action. “Climbing out my window like a television teenager, singing songs that you don’t know and falling in love with strangers,” Pelkey belts on the opener “I Can’t Tell,” a fitting visual metaphor for the EP’s biggest and smallest rebellions, and songs loaded with hair color-based imagery: On the cover, red dye from Pelkey’s wet roots bleeds into the drain. “Dying is a very important thing,” they say. I ask, “Which kind?” They laugh and reply, “You choose!”
Pelkey elaborates, “You’re destroying the natural pigment in your hair at the same time as you insert new pigment. Parts of yourself have to die to be reborn. You have to die entirely in this life. It’s all kind of swirling together in an impressionist way. I’m not sure I really have a linear language for it, but it’s definitely all clumped together—like hair!”
Swank and I are picking at the lovely spread of tea, coffee, and strawberries Pelkey has laid out for us on the coffee table. I’m seated on their pink velvet couch, the room and all of its recording equipment and miscellaneous kitsch bathed in natural light. It’s a real I Spy of Big Girl artifacts—the TV from the “Forever” music video; the fictional Big Girl Magazine, which features headlines like “MR. HOT DOG: PROFESSIONAL FASHION MODEL,” “FINAL BILLIONAIRE FOUND BY BIG GIRL SECRET POLICE,” and “BITCH I’M GAY”; a screen-printing sheet hanging on a closet door that reads, “I GOT FIRED AT THE BIG GIRL SHOW.”
“Everybody gets fired!” Pelkey says, referring to their tradition of ending Big Girl shows by “firing” the audience, a routine that will spill out of the High Noon’s indoor space and collide with Maruja’s soundcheck outside at the Paste Party in a few weeks. “We’re an equal-opportunity un-employer,” adds Swank.
Some fans have taken this bit to the next level, quitting their jobs at Big Girl concerts and proudly showing Pelkey their timestamped two-weeks-notice emails as proof. “Quit your job, do it now, ‘cause it’s nice outside,” they sing on “quit ur job,” a DYE track whose sunny shredding and relentless pursuit of a good time would make Sheryl Crow proud. “Outside the city reaching out the window for something that they talk about on small town radio,” Pelkey later muses, as their daydream morphs into a series of demands: “Get a job just to quit! Apply for executive! Lie on all your references!”
Pelkey’s own day job as a music teacher comes up while they’re showing me the tiny suit they wore for the “DIY GOD” video—which I say looks “very School of Rock.” Pelkey admits that sometimes they do feel a bit like Jack Black’s Dewey Finn, teaching the youth to stick it to the man and bestowing upon them the belief that one great rock show can change the world. “But most of the time I feel more like Spyder,” they shrug. Another “DIY GOD” prop they show me is the beat-up suitcase they dragged across train tracks, graveyards, and beaches while filming the music video. They let me hold it, and though it’s empty, it’s surprisingly heavy.
Big Girl’s music—and its accompanying visuals—brim with scrappy theatricality. While promoting Big Girl vs. God, they structured their live shows around a fictional game show of the same name, with Pelkey as the host and two Barbie dolls the teams (“Big Girl” and “God”) . Most punk bands wouldn’t think to turn their concerts into game shows, but, then again, most punk bands don’t have a 14-person choir joining them onstage either. Pelkey shows me a mock-up drawing of a massive interactive art installation made of hair, built by their friend Paprika for the music video for “Dye My Hair.” They explain that, in the video, they’ll be swinging from a harness (also covered in hair). Their hope is to use the hair installation and harness at one of their future shows and sing while swinging above the crowd, Spiderman-style.
One of their biggest inspirations for these immersive over-the-top live shows is Sloppy Jane, an art-rock group whose music is deeply entwined with some of the most pivotal moments in Pelkey’s creative and personal life. One of the major catalysts for them and Swank starting Big Girl was the passing of Pelkey’s mother in 2021. Shortly before lockdown, Pelkey and Swank had been on their way to a Deerhoof/Sloppy Jane show when they got the call that their’s mother had had a stroke—the first in a series of many that would lead to a long period of hospitalization in Miami (Pelkey’s hometown and a COVID hotspot during the onset of the pandemic) and, ultimately, to her death.
“The day that [Sloppy Jane’s 2021 album] Madison came out was the day that my mom’s ex-boyfriend from the ’70s mailed me this huge painting of her,” Pelkey tells me. I have several follow-up questions: Did he paint it? (No, Pelkey’s aunt, Angela Fremont, did.) Did Pelkey know it was from their mom’s ex-boyfriend? (Yes.) Was it a surprise? (No, he’d reached out a few weeks earlier and said he wanted them to have it.)
The painting now hangs on a wall in Pelkey and Swank’s hallway, thick brushstrokes in hushed blues and grays. The first time Pelkey listened to Madison, the orchestral record captured entirely in an underground cave, soundtracked their unveiling of the painting. Cloaked in seemingly countless layers of bubble wrap, it took until the twinkling instrumental outro of the record’s title track for Pelkey to finally get to the painting itself. They play this specific part of Madison for me off their phone: “It was this part when I finally got through the bubble wrap and saw my mom’s face. It was so cinematic.”
Pelkey grew up in Miami’s DIY scene, attending and playing local shows in warehouses, basements, and “the kind of bars that’ll let you in even if you’ve got braces on.” They talk about seeing bands like Glocca Morra and Divino Niño as a teenager and falling in love with DIY from a young age. At 18, they left Florida and went to college in Boston, where they studied music therapy, continued, and began playing in various bands. That’s how they met Swank, an Oberlin conservatory-trained classical guitarist from Saint Cloud, Minnesota. (“But I shredded in high school,” he contends). “And then we were in a band together and fell in love!” Pelkey laughs.
The two musicians moved to New York City in 2016 and fully embraced its music scene and vibrant community. “I think I’m gonna be a lifer, I never want to leave,” Pelkey says, crediting the city’s independent, often musician-owned venues like Alphaville and TV Eye for nurturing local talent and building strong relationships with artists based on mutual respect and support. Though gentrification and increases in the cost of living have been putting a strain on New York’s independent music scene since New York started having an independent music scene to begin with, Pelkey and Swank agree that their connections with other working artists have enabled them to make the most of their often-limited material resources. “I feel a really strong inborn sense of willpower,” says Pelkey. “And I think that’s sometimes a result of not having all the resources that I need to make things that I want, and knowing that my greatest resource is my obsessiveness and willingness to just go and go. Which is why I think DIY really resonates with me.”
So much of the job comes down to persistence and a willingness to do the grunt work. It’s not super glamorous or optimistic to think of any music scene being a competition to see who can send the most emails to the right people at the right time, but sometimes that’s the reality. A more positive way of looking at it—the way Pelkey does—is as a sort of barter network where DIY doesn’t just mean Doing It Yourself, but as Pelkey puts it, “Doing It For Each Other.” Collaboration and artistic citizenship are key to willing the things you imagine into existence. “Someone gets a phone call from you and they’re like, ‘Okay, what is it we’re doing?’ I’m like, ‘Can you play the banana shaker onstage at our next show?’ Or, ‘Do you mind waking up at 5 AM to shoot a music video with me?’ And people do wanna be included in stuff like that! People wanna be involved. There’s Big Girl and then there’s this Bigger Girl universe.” The slogan for Big Girl’s creative approach might as well be DIY: It Takes A Village.
DYE EP is out now.
Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, New York, currently based in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her work has appeared in The Alternative, Merry-Go-Round Magazine, Post-Trash, Swim Into The Sound and her “mostly about music” newsletter,Our Band Could Be Your Wife.
