Jancy Buffington, the mastermind behind the brooding Seattle-based project MØAA, shuffled her tour dates around for Artifice’s Scarlet Goth Night. After a turn out like the last one, how could she not?

“That [January] show that we played at Artifice was one of our best shows of that tour,” Buffington tells the Weekly. “We were shocked. I think a lot of times, when it’s a goth bar or a goth venue, it seems to fit really well with MØAA.”

MØAA’s chilling, atmospheric dreamscapes get circulated around the darkwave forums a lot. Debut album Euphoric Recall, which Buffington recorded in Italy with co-producer/live guitarist Andrea Volpato, holds a tangible amount of weight, reinforced by thick, shadowy bass lines and a progressive sense of dreamy, pop-tinged doom.

Ask her about her process, though, and she’ll tell you it was an album driven purely by instinct.

“Truly, when I was writing Euphoric Recall, I did not have any intention of a genre. It was just a complete childlike exploration of writing,” she says, adding that Brian Jonestown Massacre and Dead Skeletons were two psych-rock bands in her top rotation during that creation period.

“There are some old influences that probably came out in that album too, like ... Songs for the Deaf from Queens of the Stone Age. That’s something that I worship, and a lot of heavier stuff I was listening to, like Tool,” she continues. “But when the album was released, I never even knew what darkwave music was. I didn’t even know the term until some fans on some press outlets were starting to say, ‘this is darkwave.’”

Obliviously, but brilliantly, MØAA had created an enthralling debut, born of Buffington’s own grappling with grief and strained relationships. On 2023’s Jaywalker, however, she’s lightened the load, trading the thicker riffs for a brighter wash of tones and a deeper appreciation for the dreamy mechanics of shoegaze.

Energy-wise, it’s a different experience, this time informed by Buffington’s deep dive into the darkwave world of bands like Drab Majesty, Soft Kill and TR/ST. And while some might suggest she pick a genre and get on with it, it’s fun to watch an adventurous musician in her element.

“I don’t like to overwork things. I like it to be as pure as possible. For me, it’s so cathartic writing that I want it to always stay that way,” she says. “If I have some objective, I feel like that would just defeat the purpose of what writing means to me.”

Buffington works closely with Volpato to c0-produce and record MØAA’s music, but she’s normally the only writer in the room, leaving Volpato to learn the parts she’s written so he can perform them in studio for the final recording. Given how personal the work is, it makes sense. Some of the subjects in her lyrics aren’t even alive anymore, she says, and others she’s cut ties with completely. So to still have music there as a form of communication is incredibly healing.

But on Jaywalker, Buffington says her focus has shifted to other tales, possibly because she’s finished telling her own.

“That’s exactly what I hypothesized. Maybe I worked through a big chunk of stuff in Euphoric Recall. Not that I don’t have any well to reach into on my own, but for whatever reason, I’ve gone towards telling other people’s stories,” she says.

As someone who studied cellular and molecular biology at the University of Washington and grew up watching every episode of Forensic Files, she has plenty of other source material to pull from, too.

“I actually wanted to become a forensic pathologist, originally. I was very morbid. I think that might not be super surprising if you see my music to some degree,” she laughs. “But it was something that I explored a lot. I was very into different serial killers. Some songs in the new album are very directly about murder, for example.”

All the more fitting for a goth night, right?

MØAA November 11, 8 p.m., $5. Artifice, artificebarlv.com.

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