In the South London underground, circa 1994, electronic music duo Basement Jaxx form over a shared love of New York house music. At first, the two think about naming their group “Underground Oasis,” but they ultimately drop the idea—reportedly after a friend warns them about a similarly named rock band that might “make it big.” Eight years later, in 2002, Basement Jaxx’s second album wins them Best British Dance Act at The Brit Awards, years after they opened for electronic greats, Daft Punk.

But perhaps the most poetic footnote of that monumental year lies 130 miles west, in the quiet city of Bath, where Victoria Beverley Walker—the soon to be PinkPantheress—is born. In time, certain sounds will cling to a young Pantheress—fragments, feelings, frequencies that she’ll use to trace the everyday into her own tonal lexicon. It seems that she was fated to be swept into the region’s unequivocal electronic current, this one darker, faster, and denser as she discovers the allure of a very heavy bass. Today, she builds on and diversifies the UK’s rave sound, taking jungle, 2-step, drum and bass, and garage, and filtering the once puristic genres through her fluttery pop sensibilities.

At the beginning of 2021, PinkPantheress—the name of whom was inspired by a game show that asked, “What is a female panther called?”—anonymously released 20 seconds of “Pain” with captions like: “Day 11 of posting a song every day bc i have nothing else to do” that inevitably went viral on TikTok and led to her signing with Parlophone Records. She soon debuted her mixtape, to hell with it, a gossamer project that distills fleeting moments of heartbreak, adoration, and reflection into tightly crafted pop vignettes. Her voice, light and clear, and understanding of the strength of brevity, wraps girlish melancholia into sweet and sugary, propulsive rhythms.

“One day, I just wanna hear you say, ‘I like you,’ What’s stopping you? Ah Ah Ah,” she repeats on “Break It Off,” a bonus track from to hell with it. The song remixes Adam F’s 1995 DnB classic “Circles,” but rather than trying to replicate the original’s depth and scale, she instead makes a new world of it—shrinking it, softening it, and placing it beneath delicate, confessional vocals. Here, she isn’t just looping old breakbeats to channel nostalgia or to siphon from previous artists; she asks what a song can mean to someone like her, right now. It’s less about remembering this feeling but more about whether this still matters. In doing so, she uses sampling or interpolations to reposition and reshape the sound for the masses, without sanding the intimacy or specificity that gave it meaning in the first place.

She shares, “I think it means way more to me that some kid in America will tell me that I’ve introduced them to drum and bass. That is one of the things I love hearing the most: that I’ve introduced someone to a specific genre, or I’ve opened up someone to a specific drum because that means that there is a difference being made that is actually substantial to me personally.”

Two years after her breakout mixtape, she returned with her debut album, Heaven Knows, hinting at a newfound maturity. And it did more than just open a door; it positioned her within the genres she reveres, transcending her bedroom meanderings to an act of intention. Heaven Knows marks a progression in sound, but even more lasting, her vision––the realization that production can be storytelling, and that intimacy can be architectural. Songs like her lead single “Mosquito,” and her quite literally life-changing chart hit, “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” with Ice Spice, cemented the fact that her previous hits weren’t just mere luck or a trend, but enduring talent. In the same year,  she wrote “Angel” for Greta Gerwig’s Golden Globe-winning Barbie. Beneath jittery beats ripple hushed, intimate vocals, crafting a world that is both familiar and hauntingly new. It feels like a subtle and natural evolution, one that deepens while carving out space for vulnerability and quiet urgency to refine.

Her songwriting more deliberate, the emotional stakes higher, Heaven knows made it obvious that Pink isn’t chasing virality, but rather actively worldbuilding. And with this growth comes a different kind of pressure—an expectation to evolve, but also to surpass. As she puts it, “A lot of people these days desire something to always be upgraded or like better than the last thing. And I think that’s very hard for some people to keep up with. Myself included. I’m sure there are times where I’ve had fans be like, ‘this is a downgrade.’ And it’s like, ‘Bro, it’s very hard to keep people’s expectations when there’s just so much for people to be impressed by.’”

But PinkPantheress has found the sweet spot between scarcity and saturation. It’s not necessarily about withholding, but about resisting the urge to overfeed. Fancy That, her long-awaited mixtape and first release in two years, arrives as a carefully portioned offering. Co-written and produced by Pink and her collaborators Aksel Arvid, Count Baldor, Oscar Scheller, and The Dare, Fancy That blends samples and interpolations from Underworld (“Illegal”), Panic! At The Disco (“Tonight”), Just Jack (“Stars”), Jessica Simpson (“Nice to Know You)”, and of course, Basement Jaxx (“Girl Like Me,” “Stars,” “Romeo”).

 “I pride myself on my production,” she affirms. “I think a lot of people don’t really recognize that a lot of female artists might prioritize this first over anything else.” Despite the lo-fi aesthetic often attached to her sound, PinkPantheress is operating within one of the most technically demanding electronic lineages. DnB is a community obsessed with precision. It has always been a sort of producer’s genre with the particular microscopic drum edits, sub-bass engineering, break manipulation so intricate it leans academic. She confesses, “I think that I wanna prove that I deserve this, you know, a place in music.”

In the high-fidelity, hyper-produced space of DnB, PinkPantheress laces a softness, humanity, and even fragility into her sound. There’s a careful curation in her music, but what keeps people listening isn’t just the aesthetic—it’s the emotional clarity behind it. Songs that hit fast, unfold quickly, and leave behind something more lasting than just a drop. While her tracks often clock in under two or three minutes, there’s a deep understanding of rhythmic tension and sonic contrast at work. Her drums are tight, fast, and often sampled straight from the same Amen Break that defined the sound. But where traditional DnB builds toward intensity, Pink often subverts that drive, pulling the tempo up, letting her vocals float above.

And it seems to work. At the time of writing this, “Pain” is just shy of over 1 billion plays, and “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” also peaked at number 3 on the charts and won Rolling Stone’s song of the year in 2023. She has 2.5 million devoted followers on Instagram and almost double on the platform she was discovered on where there are over 2.5 million videos using her music. Last year, Pink was named the Producer of the Year Award at Billboard’s 2024 Women in Music Awards. Her presence saturates our feeds, and her songs embed themselves like echoes, but in all honesty, it seems that PinkPantheress isn’t interested in what’s on paper or any traditional measure of success or, honestly, being a popstar.

“It’s what we all desire,” she explains, “but the reality of the situation is that the happiness you can feel from a moment like that can be very fleeting compared to when you know that you’ve actually changed someone’s outlook on music, or you’ve just inspired a kid to listen to this type of music, that means so much. I think a lot of people call me nonchalant or they say I don’t care, they say that like, ‘Oh, she doesn’t sound like she [etc., etc.]and I’m like, ‘Bro, I live for this!’” she explains. “I just think that as someone who has experience with songs doing really well, the feeling of it is wonderful, but it really obviously isn’t something that you can [keep]. Two months later, you won’t have that song on the chart anymore, and it’s like, ‘Well, what’s my next fix?’”

It’s always about the chase, isn’t it? For some at least, but maybe not PinkPantheress. Perhaps she has a hunger for something that is more enduring? Or perhaps she’s not hungry at all. She just loves music in an industry obsessed with fleeting moments and viral “success.” She cares less about preservation and more about reinvention. She continues: “I think longevity is so subjective as to what actually causes it. We’ve seen people have a lot of longevity and we’ve had people who have not, but I don’t think there’s one thing that makes someone have longevity over another, apart from what people would consider to be authenticity, which I do believe is probably the strongest thing. I don’t think that I approach my music [with the idea to] last longer than anyone else. I am true to myself, and I don’t do things that don’t resonate with me. If that’s one of the things that means I’ll last longer, then that will probably be the reason I do.”

PinkPantheress grew up within the contours of the music that shaped her, listening closely, and letting it seep until it became a part of her. And what began as a quiet admiration has now turned into something more certain: a seat at the table. So, she doesn’t shout for attention, but softly insists, inviting us to lean in closer to feel the weight of silence between the notes and the tenderness beneath the rush. The results forge a delicate thread connecting moments, places, and people, an echo of that original “underground oasis” that never quite was, yet always existed in spirit. In her hands, the past isn’t just remembered—it’s rearranged, until it feels like something we’ve always known, but are only just now learning to hear.

Photographed by Yana Van Nuffel 

Styled by Milena Agbaba

Written by Bree Castillo

Hair: Shanice Noel at MMG Artists

Makeup: Joy Adenuga at Forward Artists using Dior Rosy Glow Stick Blush

Set Design: Clodagh at Wet Studio

Producer: Eliot Brittain

Flaunt Film Editor: Franchesca Baratta

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