The Thermals

To wrap-up our coverage of this year's Musicfest Northwest queer and female musicians, we just wanted to share a final wrap-up of some of the live shows we saw, from little kid audiences to confetti-throwing back-up dancers, starting with Seattle rappers THEEsatisfaction...

Do you know what today is? It's Personal Life release day! If you're a Thermals fan (and you know I am), you've been excited for this day for a while now. And you won't be disappointed, because Personal Life delivers all of the energy, catchy hooks, and sing-along lyrics you've come to expect from these cuties. Check out their latest video if you need proof:



Pssst... You can also preview the new album at NPR First Listen, and if you live in PDX you can see The Thermals live this week at MusicFestNW (oh, and you can see us there too!).

Tomorrow, some people from OPB's "In House" are coming to the Bitch office to ask us about our top five favorite albums of 2009. This means that we have been spending a fair amount of time racking our brains to come up with a serviceable top five list that won't reveal to the public radio-listening public that at least one of us (hi, that's me) has been mostly jamming out to Linda Ronstadt records from the 70s for the past six months (I guess you can't submit a 2009 top five list unless the albums actually came out in 2009?). At any rate, today's B-Sides is a test run of our top five list, expanded into a top ten. Read on to give us your thoughts!

Today marks the long-awaited release of "Now We Can See," the fourth album from Portland’s own The Thermals. The album was reviewed in the "Buzz" issue of Bitch, but as a huge fan of the band, I thought it deserved a bit of blog attention as well. Check out the video from their single, "Now We Can See"! It just came out today. I should warn you, though, it contains enough handclap-y happiness to last you all week long: I love The Thermals, and what’s not to love? They’re an amazing band; they tackle a variety of important political issues in their catchy songs; they’re super-fun live; they recently signed with the awesome, feminist, Kill Rock Stars; and they were nice enough to sit down for an interview with yours truly! (All that and I didn't even mention their extreme cuteness.) Read on for some of Kathy Foster’s (bass) and Hutch Harris’s (vocals, guitar) thoughts on the new album, and of course, feminism. Hooray!