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5 Lesbian Indie-Rockers You Need to Know About

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Daniel Villarreal last shared five homo-hop artists that should be on your radar.

Mention lesbian rock, and whatever part of your cerebral cortex stores this sort of thing will immediately pull up two words: Lilith Fair. But Sarah McLachlan’s traveling festival of female musicians took its last breath in 1999 — and yet, miraculously, girls on guitars haven’t disappeared. Indeed, the spirit of the lesbian rocker lives on in all its Sapphic glory. Last month in San Francisco, a handful of up-and-coming lesbian musicians played at the queer arts and music festival Homo a Go Go, the perfect hunting ground for sibling guitar rockers, comic rappers, post-punk paranoiacs, and a handful of other bad-asses (like Girls In A Coma, pictured) willing to rock you a thing or two about heartbreak, wolf poop, and the ukele. Hooking up with “the third sex” never sounded so good.

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IDENTIFICATION: Tender Forever
ORIGINS: Portland, Oregon
RECORDS: 2
GET STARTED WITH: Her ukulele cover of Justin Timberlake’s “My Love” (video below)
KILLER LYRICS: “It’s not you, it’s no one, It’s just better, I’m your guest, I’m your lover, and like war it lasts forever” (From “Heartbroken Forever”)

Armed with only a keyboard, a laptop, and a mic, French-born electrosoul soloist Melanie Valera sings simple yet powerful love songs with a charming French lilt and occasional ukulele. She describes Tender Forever’s sound as “a kick drum in an empty warehouse while little kids play right outside,” and the description’s accurate. Her lyrics have a child-like sensibility both fun and profound. Backed by simple beats, Valera’s near spoken word songs ponder the revelations and heartbreak of everyday love. In “Tiny Heart and Clever Hand” she says, “If the wolves ever show up… you should go out and walk barefoot / you should measure your longest doo.” Then after howling wistfully into the mic, she continues, “Your heart is so tiny sometimes… Your hand is too clever sometimes / I wish you were a wolf sometimes / and wish sometimes was now.”

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IDENTIFICATION: Girls In A Coma
ORIGINS: San Antonio, Texas
RECORDS: 2
GET STARTED WITH: “Clumsy Sky” (video below)
KILLER LYRICS: “I do want to marry you. / I want to suck all of your toes and love you when you’re feeling low. / And fall down when you scream, Bang!… Scream it out, You’re the first in the game. / Fail to mention now, you’ve forgotten my name. / Stare down the barrel of your own gun ‘cause it’s yours” (From “El Monte”)

This all-Mexican San Antonio trio has all the rocking sound of a great bar band, and that’s no backhanded compliment. Yes, some of their songs sound the same, but in any given tune they can shift from Jenn Alva’s easy-going guitar to Phannie Diaz’s head-banging drums. Add to that Nina Alva’s ass-kicking, heart-melting voice that sometimes turns Spanish, and you’ll understand why guitar rock goddess, Joan Jett, signed them to her label after seeing them just once. Their lyrical content follows Jett’s with songs about damaged love, gutless insincerity, and social traps, but they keep a distinctly hometown flavor in their videos. The video for “Road to Home” features transsexual fashion icon Amanda Lepore lip-synching in a darkened cantina while the girls stir whiskey shots and a disheveled man dons drag in the backroom. What’s not to love?

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IDENTIFICATION: Erase Errata
ORIGINS: San Francisco, California
RECORDS: 3
GET STARTED WITH: “Tax Dollar” (video below)
KILLER LYRICS: “I’ve got a way, yes. I’ve really got away—with murder, manslaughter, all funded by my tax dollar” (From “Tax Dollar”)

A Monty Python politician in day-glo clothing directs his endless army of plastic men across a cartoon town. Meanwhile, grainy military footage places black boxes over soldiers’ guns and physical contact. Yes, Erase Errata’s “Tax Dollar” video may sound like fun and games, but it’s darkly serious stuff. The intense short songs of this post-punk trio come off like a lo-fi Gang of Four or Joy Division; their compositions are definitely more interested in decomposition, especially with topics like gender-motivated murder (“he wants what’s mine”) and corrosive friends (“Gross Grace”). Only the rollicking drums and punchy vocals lighten their discordant guitars and foreboding bass.

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IDENTIFICATION: Mirah
ORIGINS: Olympia, Washington
RECORDS: 5 (solo-full length, though she’s worked on 14 albums overall)
GET STARTED WITH: “Jerusalem” (video below)
KILLER LYRICS: “Looking at that sorry face i can recognize the fear / But if you keep on looking up at night the stars will all appear / See there’s food for me, there’s food for you, there’s gold that’s in the air / There’s oceans deep and wide and there is love beyond compare.” (From “Apples in the Trees”; listen to it here)

Thirty-five-year-old Jewish lesbian songstress Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn began recording alone with her guitar on a 4-track tape deck her father bought her as graduation gift. Since then, she’s become adept at ornamenting her acoustic songs to great effect with thundering timpani, dreamy xylophones, and haunting echoes. But at their heart sits a young woman still strumming out her most intimate confessions about absent lovers (“The Struggle”), fellow musicians (“Oh September!”), and the friend who left her devastated (“Mt. Saint Helen”). Her wistful, poetic stylings often get her compared to Liz Phair, but Mirah’s more lo-fi, soft-spoken and folky. And while she’s not nearly as pointed or as upbeat as Liz Phair, her 2001 masterpiece, Advisory Committee, demonstrates that imagination, storytelling and honesty remain the most compelling of musical effects.

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IDENTIFICATION: Team Gina
ORIGINS: Seattle, Washington
RECORDS: 2
GET STARTED WITH: “Wife Swapping” (video below)
KILLER LYRICS: “Now this is why lesbians just should not date / why do I have drama that’s crossing like four states? / I broke up with Becky and she said, “I’m not a ho.’ / I never said you were but that’s your rep in Colorado” (From “Wife Swapping”)

With matching 80s outfits, cheesy choreography, and comic pop-infused raps, it’s no wonder that Gina Bling and Gina Genius of Team Gina got voted fifth “Most Bangable Band” by the Seattle Stranger. They mock themselves as wannabe rappers but still deliver quick verbal dexterity whether they’re waxing about the incestuous nature of community dating (Wife Swapping) or getting turned on by big butch dykes (“Butch/Femme”). But their comic rhymes also strike deep. Their breakout tune, “Products of the 80’s,” begins with a rapid-fire mash of 80s references from Back to the Future to The Oregon Trail and Garbage Pail Kids. It’s a poppy nostalgic kick the ends pondering, “Everything old is new again / we’re nostalgic for things we don’t even understand. / No day without AIDS in my lifetime / Don’t tell me everything will be all fine.”

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