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Even when she sings about betrayal and heartache, Shalini Chatterjee makes joyous music with a crunchy pop-punk feel. But even the bounciest songs don’t come easy.

“I think some people are just natural-born songwriters,” Chatterjee says. “I’m not. It’s like living through something that’s not very comfortable sometimes. It’s tiring and frustrating. And then you’re always doubting it: 'Well, this isn’t very good,’ or 'Who’s gonna wanna hear this?’ ”

Fortunately, fans and critics disagree. A review of Chatterjee’s just-released six-song EP, “Magnetic North,” in the magazine The Big Takeover praises “Chatterjee’s fervent 'devotion’ to ’60-’80s pop.”

“Nobody mines this style with more spirit and joie de vivre,” Mark Suppanz writes.

Even Chatterjee concedes that the majority of the EP rocks: “Four (songs) are good, and two are not that good.”

But she refuses to specify which are which. She also declines to comment on whether the songs reflect the dissolution of her marriage to Mitch Easter, a veteran Triad rocker and producer who has produced a variety of artists, including R.E.M. and Jews and Catholics.

Lyrics such as “You don’t want me around” from “One of One” and “I’m outta control, I’m outta my mind” from “Echo” give several songs on the EP a dark, bitter feel, although the mood lightens a little on “Sky of Diana” and “See You in My Dreams.”

Chatterjee and her band recorded the bulk of “Magnetic North” during a two-day session in October at a home studio in Chapel Hill operated by Jay Manley and Jane Francis. When the band performs live, Francis sings and plays bass, and she contributed harmony vocals to most of the tracks on the EP.

This summer, Chatterjee will play sidewoman on a larger stage. Her band will open some shows for Supercluster, a band led by Vanessa Briscoe Hay of Pylon, an acclaimed 1980s indie-rock band from Athens, Ga. At Hay’s invitation, Chatterjee also will substitute for Supercluster’s bass player on some August shows, including a couple of opening slots for the B-52s.

“It’s not intimidating at all,” Chatterjee says. “I have been doing this for 23 years. I’ve been playing in bars pretty anonymously, so doing something like this, I feel like, 'I’m ready. Before I die.’ ”

Chatterjee came to the fore as a pop-rock bass player, songwriter and guitarist with her 1990s San Francisco band, Vinyl Devotion. Born in rural India to an Indian father and English mother, Chatterjee moved to Scotland when she was a toddler and ended up in Southern California by the time she was 4. At that time, she was already a fan of the all-girl television cartoon band Josie and the Pussycats, and she was excited about moving to their homeland.

“When I heard we were moving to America, I was like, 'We’re going there?!’ ” Chatterjee says.

Her parents started her on violin lessons at a young age, but it would be awhile before she got her first guitar.

“I was forced into this crappy classical world,” she says. “That’s one reason I left home when I was 17. I thought they were just so silly. Nobody in my family plays music. They’re all like medical people; they think the whole world is a bank or a laboratory.”

At the University of Wisconsin in the late 1980s Chatterjee played bass and sang in the group Kissyfish. It wasn’t until she moved to San Francisco and formed Vinyl Devotion that she realized her pop-punk vision, which blends influences such as X, Pat Bena-tar, Blondie and the Bangles. She also loved some of the bands on IRS Records, including the Go-Go’s and Easter’s former band Let’s Active.

Chatterjee’s relationship with Easter brought her to the Triad in the mid-1990s, and she has released a series of acclaimed records in the years since under the band name Shalini. She also has brought music documentaries and other films to the area through her work with the Revolve Film and Music Festival, including several events coming up in July at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in conjunction with the exhibit “Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids.”

Contact Eddie Huffman at ehuffman@triad.rr.com