2015 Favorite : Tkay Maidza

I know we each come into our own in due time but damn, Tkay Maidza makes me think that at age 19, I could have been doing a lot more. Check out this remarkable Australian rapper / singer who still lives at home with her parents. Her videos are fantastic too.

2015 Favorites : Trash Kit

2015 isn't quite over yet but if I had to name my top 5 record of the year thus far, it would include Trash Kit's Confidence. They are an all female three piece band from London playing polyrhythmic punk. There is African fingerpicking styles blended with raw energy and soul but there is so much more rumbling out of this band too.

Check out this interview.

You can buy their music here.

Their Facebook page is here. 

They also have a HUGE band family tree that includes Shopping, Electrelane, Cover Girl, Sacred Paws , Lesbo Pigs (video below), The Battys, Ray Rumours, Columbus & Crusoe and Halo Halo. I am sure there are probably more I am too square to know about but this is a good starting place at the very least. Lemme know what I missed!

Heavenly's Family Tree

It would be in poor taste to name my blog Attagirl! and not pay tribute to a spectacular song that carries the same name by the UK band Heavenly.

This Oxford, England band that lived from the late '80s to the mid '90s has a large family tree of bands before and after them that are worthy of mentioning and exploring to.

Talulah Gosh came first in the mid '80s.

After Heavenly disbanded there was Marine Research.

And that brings us to Tender Trap.

Ex member Peter Momtchiloff  has been in a number of bands including Scarlett's Well (also includes Bid of The Monochrome Set) and the Would Be Goods.

Most recently there is The Catenary Wires that features Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey.

 Happy exploring! There are several days worth of listening built into this family tree of bands.

Nancy Sinatra

Nancy Sinatra was among the first women I began obsessively collecting records by. I have always been drawn to the complex layers at work behind her image during the '60s and '70s. She was a strong woman yet was also daddy's good little girl (Frank Sinatra to be exact). She was a sex kitten with claws. She believed that a feminist could still be sexy and that the two were not mutually exclusive from each other. Here is a great read on "Female Empowerment, Nancy's Way" . This push and pull of sexy and strong appears time and time again in music (from Kathleen Hanna to Beyoncé) so while there were plenty of bad ass ladies that came before Nancy in music, it really all started with her for me. 

 

I dig Nancy so much that I took my DJ and social media name from this hit Lee Hazlewood wrote for her. 

Welcome to Attagirl!

Attagirl! is slang for an exclamation of praise to a girl or woman. I can't think of a more positive name for what I would like to accomplish here. I want to celebrate women in music while hoping this site will motivate other women to start and / or keep making music too. If she can do it, you can too. If I can do it, I PROMISE, you can too.