music

We got a chance to see the lovely Thao & Mirah here in Portland on Sunday night. They're on tour together in support of their collaborative album (which is terrific!) and the show was a total blast. Here are five reasons to see these two—and the great musicians they're touring with—when they roll through your town.

Poly Styrene, the lead singer of the pioneering punk band X-Ray Spex, died on Monday after a battle with cancer. She was 53.

Styrene’s glass-shattering vocals made the band’s 1978 album Germ Free Adolescents a punk masterpiece, and the song "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" in particular stands out as one of punk feminism’s original eff yous to the sexism and prejudice that existed not only in mainstream society, but in the burgeoning punk community as well.

Some of the sexiest, most soulful singers also happen to be fat women. These are the kind of women who can empower you with their voice to embrace sensuality. From a plus size fashion icon to a musical legend, these singers prove that sexiness has nothing to do with size and everything to do with how you work it.

Cool kids (like our editorial intern Mel, for example) may have been tipped off to Austra long ago through lead singer Katie Stelmanis' work with the band Galaxy, but I only recently discovered this Toronto-based trio and I am loving them!

Born Umpeylia Marsema Balinton ("Peliya" to her family) in 1935, the artist known as Sugar Pie DeSanto still gets the crowd jumping today with her R&B vocal stylings and dynamic stage shows.

To look in the "Blues" section of most record stores, you'd think it was only men who had troubles worth singing about. This week it is my pleasure to prove this assumption SPECTACULARLY WRONG, with a glimpse at some of the women who have howled, growled, whimpered and moaned their way through the Blues.

Each month in our nifty newsletter (sign up on the homepage if you haven't already), we'll be polling Bitch staffers and readers on their top five in different categories and posting the polls and results on the Bitch blog. This month, it's frontwomen whose talents we wish we possessed. So c'mon, give us five!

I did some of my growing up on the island of Maui, Hawai'i, but somehow only came to pick up the ukulele seriously when I was 23 and living in Los Angeles. I'm back in Hawai'i for a little while, and am taking every opportunity I can to sit on the beach and strum my uke while my brother the professional chef sears some mahi mahi for dinner. It's raining here, and is supposed to for upwards of a week, but this little instrument brings sunshine and aloha spirit wherever it goes. In looking for new songs to play (ps if you have ideas, leave them in the comments and I'll IOU a Youtube video when I learn it!), I realized that EVERYONE AND THEIR DAD is now playing the ukulele, and Youtube is basically used at this point exclusively for cat videos and people playing ukulele versions of Regina Spektor songs. So I thought this week, in the spirit of these islands I love, I would do a sampling of the best the uke has had to offer in what seems to be a full-blown Ukulele Revolution. 

For those feeling wistful or sentimental, I present a mix of tracks that speak of nostalgia, and also evoke my own personal memories of specific times and emotions. What songs make you nostalgic?

Track list after the jump!

Iceland has been called the most female-friendly country in the world, and Scandinavia is world-renowned for producing perfectpop acts, so it was only a matter of time before my obsession radar brought me to female Icelandic musicians. Here are a very few of my favorites, some new to me (Ólöf) and some newly re-visited (Björk, dear Björk).