Bikini Kill

Bikini Kill formed in Olympia, Washington, in 1990, when singer Kathleen Hanna, drummer Tobi Vail, bassist Kathi Wilcox, and guitarist Billy Karren built a band around the fanzine Hanna was already publishing. Their sound is raw, hardcore-inflected punk pitched for confrontation: three-chord urgency, shouted vocals, and lyrics that turned rape culture, sexual abuse, and female solidarity into songs meant to be screamed from the front of the stage, a spot they insisted women and girls claim by force. Anthems like 'Rebel Girl' and 'Double Dare Ya' made them the band most often credited with instigating the Riot Grrrl movement of the early 1990s. The zines and touring networks did as much work as the records. They split in 1997 after a final show in Tokyo, reunited briefly in 2017, and have toured steadily since 2019, playing to crowds a generation removed from the one that first heard them.