Bikini Kill
The 20 Best Riot Grrrl Songs
“Even though I did punch her, I thought she was a genius,” Courtney Love said of Kathleen Hanna in 2002, while attempting to explain riot grrrl to The Strokes live on MTV. Twenty years later, and about 30 since the movement’s inception, trying to define it still feels fraught. Riot grrrl was always a nebulous concept, a label intended to be adopted and personalized by young feminist punks globally. But by the early aughts, once the revolution had become FUBAR from in-fighting, unwanted media attention, and accusations of racist and transphobic exclusion, it already felt like a dream of the past. In that sense, riot grrrl was a specific movement born out of a specific moment in time, and a handful of specific places (usually Washington, state and D.C.). It is not a catch-all label for ...
Watch The Linda Lindas’ Raucous New Collab With Bikini Kill, Raincoats Members
Los Angeles punk band The Linda Lindas released a new music video in collaboration with Erica Dawn Lyle and Kathi Wilcox of Bikini Kill and Vice Cooler of The Raincoats. “Lost In Thought” features the Linda Lindas moshing, skating, and dancing their way around a suburban backyard. Lyle and Wilcox can be seen jamming out on guitar and bass as Cooler pounds a drumset. [embedded content][embedded content] This song is part of the Erica Dawn Lyle and Vice Cooler album titled Land Trust, only available on Bandcamp. Cooler also directed and edited the music video. The Linda Lindas went viral for their performance of “Racist, Sexist Boy” recorded at the L.A. Public Library. In April, they released their debut album Growing Up via Epitaph. In 2019, the teenage quartet opened for Bikini Kill and ea...
Kim Gordon Teams With Bikini Kill’s Erica Dawn Lyle for ‘Debt Collector’
A new track featuring Kim Gordon is the latest to emerge from the benefit compilation Land Trust: Benefit for NEFOC, which, as previously reported, will be released June 3 on Bandcamp. Gordon appears on the song “Debt Collector” by compilation organizers Erica Dawn Lyle (Bikini Kill) and Vice Cooler (The Raincoats), as well as in its accompanying video. [embedded content][embedded content] Land Trust: Benefit for NEFOC will benefit the Indigenous-led grassroots organization Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, which reconnects POC farmers to land control and returns farmland to Indigenous nations. “Debt Collector” comes on the heels of the first released track from the compilation, “Mirrorball” by Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna. It’s her first new song in four years. “This is the ...
Hear First New Kathleen Hanna Song In Four Years On LAND ACT Benefit Comp
The first new Kathleen Hanna song in more than four years leads the track list for LAND ACT: Benefit for North East Farmers of Color, a charity album due for a June 3 release on Bandcamp. The project was assembled by Hannah’s Bikini Kill bandmate Erica Dawn Lyle in tandem with The Raincoats’ Vice Cooler, and Hannah’s contribution, “Mirrorball,” is out today (May 6). In the wake of the COVID-necessitated cancellation of Bikini Kill’s spring 2020 tour, Lyle says she and Cooler “wrote songs together remotely via file sharing and then asked a bunch of our friends to help us finish the songs.” Other artists making appearances on LAND ACT include Kim Gordon, Mike Watt, The Raincoats, The Linda Lindas, Deerhoof’s Satomi Matsuzaki, Slant 6’s Christina Billotte, Alice Bag, Kelley Deal and Shopping’...
Bikini Kill Detail 2022 Summer Tour
Bikini Kill is kicking off their long-awaited international tour next month. The run was initially set for 2020, but the rescheduled run has a handful of new shows throughout the U.S. and Europe. Fans can purchase tour tickets now. Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, and guitarist Erica DawnLyle are returning to where they first started as a band, Olympia, Washington. The two-night, sold-out stint will benefit Interfaith Works Nightly Shelter. Bikini Kill Tour Dates 4/26: Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy + Harriet’s w/ Bleached4/29: Los Angeles, CA @ Greek Theatre w/ Bleached5/2: Tucson, AZ @ Rialto Theatre w/ Hunx and his Punx5/4: Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater w/ Hunx and his Punx5/5: El Paso, TX @ Lowbrow Palace w/ Hunx and his Punx5/7: Austin, TX @ The Mohawk w/ Hunx and his Punx5/8: A...
The 90 Greatest Albums of the ’90s
This article originally appeared in the September 1999 issue of SPIN. “You must be high.” We heard that a lot during the time we spent preparing this issue. Which is understandable. Pronouncing the 90 greatest albums of the ’90s is a somewhat presumptuous thing to do. When you’re measuring the music this decade is offering to history—the sounds we partied with, copulated to, fought about, and wept over—everyone has an opinion. That ours should be more valid than yours is debatable. But hey—it’s our magazine. What, then, you ask, constitutes “greatest”? Don’t even start. Suffice it to say that, after much heated discussion and countless veiled insults, it came down to the factors of both remarkable artistry and cultural shock value. Sometimes a record’s knock-you-off-your-Skechers impa...
Beck, Gorillaz, Nick Cave, Pavement and More Slated for Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival 2022
While 2021 festivals are coming fast and furious, festival fans have something to look forward to in 2022, thanks to Beck, Gorillaz, Nick Cave, The Strokes, Pavement and more slated for the jam-packed Primavera Sound Festival. The two-day fest in Barcelona will also see Massive Attack, Tame Impala, the National and Tyler, The Creator on the first weekend. The second will see some acts repeating, but joined by such luminaries as Lorde, Dua Lipa, Megan Thee Stallion, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Interpol. But wait, there’s more. Primavera also nabbed such cool names as Bauhaus, Bikini Kill, Einstürzende Neubáuten, Kacey Musgraves, Earl Sweatshirt, Jawbox, Beach House, Charli XCX, Mavis Staples, Sharon Van Etten, Dinosaur Jr., slowthai, girl in red, and IDLES. Jumping on th...
Tom Morello, Thurston Moore and Others Show Support for Punk Rock’s New Viral Darlings, The Linda Lindas
Yesterday, you probably saw a video of some teenage girls rocking out in a library, singing their instant hit single “Racist, Sexist Boy” about… well… a racist, sexist boy. Said video of the Linda Lindas got tweeted, shared, posted, and distributed in every other possible way on the internet by everyone from comedians to journalists to musicians to the L.A. Public Library (which hosted the performance for the AAPI Heritage Month edition of “TEENtastic Tuesdays”), and it’s getting some support from noteworthy rockers like Tom Morello and Thurston Moore. Morello tweeted out the library’s Instagram post with the caption “Song of the day!” while Moore put it up on his Instagram, saying “Racist, Sexist Boy by the Linda Lindas. Song of 2021 so far…by far! Total inspiration is ageless.” It’s...
Bikini Kill Announce Rescheduled 2022 Tour With New Stops in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta
Just like everyone else, Bikini Kill had their touring plans squashed due to the pandemic and initially planned to push it to this year. Alas, that isn’t happening. However, Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox and Erica Dawn Lyle will be hitting the road almost exactly one year from today. On Wednesday, Bikini Kill unveiled their 2022 tour dates, which include a bunch of new stops, including Los Angeles, Tucson, El Paso, Austin, St. Augustine, New York City and many more. The group also announced a limited-edition blue vinyl of Reject All American coinciding with the album’s 25th anniversary. It will be released on the next Bandcamp Friday (May 7), and there are only 500, so you better move quickly. Last year, we named Bikini Kill as one of our most influential artists of the past...
Kathleen Hanna and Ad-Rock Talk Bikini Kill, Beastie Boys With Dan Rather
Beastie Boys’ Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna are the latest subjects on Dan Rather’s special “Musical Family” themed season of The Big Interview. In a clip from the show, Ad-Rock discusses last year’s Beastie Boys documentary and Hanna reflects on the catalyst that sparked Bikini Kill’s 2019 reunion. “Part of it was because of the Kavanaugh hearings and part of it was because of Me Too,” she explained. “A lot of those songs are much angrier than my later work, or a lot of them were Feminist 101, so I didn’t feel like singing those songs and then all of a sudden I wanted to sing those songs, watching the Kavanaugh hearings. I was singing my own lyrics to myself in my head. I started singing the songs in the shower, I started singing them in the car, I sta...
The Most Influential Artists: #31 Bikini Kill
As part of our 35th-anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #32. From Olympia, Washington here’s Bikini Kill. CREDIT: Steve Eichner/WireImage Marches, protests and mass movements against misogyny — no, these aren’t moments from ‘60s second-wave feminism or even the ‘90s third-wave. It’s all happening now, and with punk rock having its own insurgence against patriarchal predators in the scene, there’s been a dire need for girls in the front now, more than ever before. Enter: Bikini Kill. Gen X-ers remember the days when Kathleen Hanna would blare this famous call to arms at gigs, while millennials and gen Z-ers simply grew up with an appreciation for the ‘90s riot grrrl movement they led, with hopes for a modern comeback. Riot grrrl may h...
Bikini Kill to Return to the Road in 2021
After seeing their lengthy reunion tour wiped out by COVID-19, Bikini Kill have revealed when they’ll be hitting the road in 2021. They’ll be starting out with a quick run in Europe, beginning on May 27 with a date in Belgium before concluding that run with a date in Berlin on June 10. Kathleen Hanna and company will resume things in Oakland a month later at the Burger Boogaloo and will resume touring in full with a Sept. 10 show in Olympia, Washington. In 2019, Bikini Kill played a limited number of dates in New York, Los Angeles and London as a part of a surprising reunion. This is the band’s first proper tour since 1997. Alice Bag, Donkey Bugs, Lithics, XV, CB Radio Gorgeous, Mecca Normal, H.C. McEntire, and Hurry Up will open on select dates. See the revised tour dates below. 5/27: Bru...
