Make immediate room on your Halloween playlist for “Stay My Fangs,” the closing track from Karma & the Killjoys’ six-track EP. Propelled by a gothy blues groove and Rain Scott-Catoire’s dramatic vocal, the song uses werewolf imagery to explore the nature of sensuality and strength. Somewhere Anne Rice is smiling.

This EP makes a worthy follow-up to the full-length Hellscape, one of the more impressive—and idiosyncratic—local rock debuts last year. The opener “Heathen’s Plea” (by co-leader Sydni Myers) picks up the obsessive love theme of that album, wishing vengeance on a former partner who clearly deserves it—but even at their most intense moments, the two singer/writers display a knack for pop-friendly chorus hooks. The lyrical themes of the other songs are more existential. “Mechanical Hands” sounds like an update of the Dresden Dolls’ cabaret-punk classic “Coin Operated Boy,” both songs make ironic use of nursery-type piano lines. And two songs here are a cappella, both “Alleluia” and “Porcelain Doll” are awash in spooky beauty, even when the lyrics are making points like “Small men need a big God, and they need a big gun.”

Though they alternate writing and lead vocals, the two frontwomen are obvious kindred spirits, adding important touches to each other’s songs. They also reach deeper with arrangements and manage a muscular instrumental sound with mainly piano and rhythm section (guitar is only evident on the closing track, and there it’s acoustic). Like the characters in these songs, the music here catches your interest while refusing to be defined.