Top 10 Kill Rock Stars Albums

“Suck! My! Left! One!” With that ferocious, gender-baiting, controversy-provoking cry, Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill immediately entered rock'n'roll infamy, delivering the incipient band, its local label Kill Rock Stars, and the nascent riot-grrrl movement to the masses. After KRS first pressed their first two records —their frenetic 1991 self-titled debut, and 1993's beautifully raw Pussy Whipped— on wax, Bikini Kill's belligerent musical beginnings were then compiled onto one compact-disc. The noisy, distorted, rough-as-guts recordings showcase a band bristling with a sense of righteous indignation; their rudimentary, bare-boned punk played with a ferociousness designed to measure up to rock-music's hyper-masculine orthodoxy.

Long before he became some rock'n'roll saint, stuck with self-inflicted stab-wounds to the heart, and even before he wore that white suit on stage at the Oscars, Elliott Smith was known wholly for the fragile, forlorn balladry of this classic record. Death Cab for Cutie beefcake Benjamin Gibbard once told me: “I remember the summer of '97 as the summer of Either/Or, because that's all that anyone I knew was listening to.” Death Cab would often cover “Say Yes,” the set's sweetest lovesong, showing Gibbard as true to his devotion. Over a decade on, Either/Or's legacy still lingers; Smith's hushed tales of heartache and depression imbued with a timeless simplicity that will strike a chord with lovelorned loners for years to come.

Years before Me and You and Everyone We Know would make her the darling of indie cinema, Miranda July produced a pair of 'radio-play' records for KRS. One was 1998's utterly unbelievable The Binet-Simon Test, an LP of deranged genius. As ominous synth sounds cultivate a sense of unease, July spits out back-and-forth banter, staging spoken-word dialogues between characters voiced solely by her. Delving into America's obsession with media scandal and public confessional, July stages self-contained scenes in which unexpected secrets come tumbling out. Drawing connecting lines between childhood games and repressed memories, July talks the listener into dark, disturbing, absurdist, hilarious soundworlds from which one fears they'll never escape.

Popular picks for favorite Sleater-Kinney LPs tend towards 1997's Dig Me Out, the exuberant, anthemic set that served as the band's breakout, or 2000's All Hands on the Bad One, their most straight-ahead, simply enjoyable set. Yet, in between, these iconic post-riot-grrrl pin-ups released what's, over time, shaped as their most enduring, most endearing, and most well-realized record. The Hot Rock is an album of tangled-up guitar-lines, sophisticated artistic ideas, and snarling self-confidence, capturing the erstwhile combo at the peak of their powers. And, for a disc that's seen as one of Sleater-Kinney's more 'difficult' listens, it's still loaded with killer pop-songs: “Memorize Your Lines,” “Get Up,” and “The End of You,” etc.

Somehow managing to cover sensitive soul crooner Aaron Neville, mad scat spitter Billy Stewart, and doom-metal overlords Black Sabbath on the same album, Quix*o*tic play an oddball brand of, um, gothic garage-rock. The bleak band's Billotte siblings —elder sis Christina (Autoclave, Slant 6, Casual Dots) and younger Mira (White Magic)— fashion an idiosyncratic take on skeletal, distortion-free rock, in which Christina plays twanging, dangling single-note guitar lines like some surf-guitarist hangin' ten on top of a gravestone. But, mostly, the Billottes sing: letting loose with a pair of soulful voices steeped in '60s-girl-groups and choral soul; songs often stripped to the barest bones so as to showcase the richness of their glorious pipes.

All ye olde seafarin' imagery, yellowing literary lyrics, and marching band stomp, Her Majesty the Decemberists introduced the world to the readily-apparent talent of Colin Meloy. Singing with a sneer equal parts Jeff Mangum and John Darnielle, Meloy pirouettes through a series of nimble numbers evoking Anglo-Saxon sea-shantys, Billy Bragg protest songs, and Elephant 6 whimsy. Throughout, his studious, well-shapen words —openly evoking other authors Dylan Thomas, Marcel Duchamp, and Myla Goldberg— seem ever-quotable; ne'er moreso than when Meloy calls Los Angeles “an ocean's garbled vomit on the shore.” Subsequent Decemberists discs have been more popular, but this still serves as the perfect entry-point to their particular brand of pop.

After some impressive early outings, The Gossip focused their sweaty soul-shouting and balls-out, bluesy boogie-rock on this brutally good rock'n'roll record. Stuffed to the gills with killer two-minute cuts, Movement is dedicated to the glories of the dancefloor; its title a plea for the audience to move their feet. Arriving right when The Strokes had ushered in hundreds of carefully-coiffed, fringe-centric rock-revival boy-bands, The Gossip's femme-powered, queer-proud take on stripped-down rock —just drums, guitar, and the belted-out vocals of former gospel chorister Beth Ditto— was like a breath of fresh air. In the years since, Ditto's found far greater fame, but The Gossip haven't come close to matching the mightiness of this disc.

The second album for Bay Area belle Nedelle Torrisi —a regular collaborateur with Why? and Xiu Xiu, and member of The Curtains and Cryptacize— showcases both her beauty and her brains. Stirring the sweetness of Torrisi's honeysuckle voice into the saltiness of her smartly-penned lyrics, From the Lion's Mouth is a tart, piquant pop-record; an album of autumnal flavors, plaintive lamentations, and poignant recollections. Favoring gentility and humility, the record dresses its songstress in tasteful daubs of nylon-string guitar, muted piano, and pianissimo clarinet. It opens with a tender eulogy for her dearly-departed dog, but there's always a funny, playful quality to proceedings; making for a sparkling set of sterling indie songwriting.

10 albums and 11 years into things, beloved Bay Area oddballs Deerhoof came close to issuing their definitive LP with the electrifying Offend Maggie; a set whose back-to-back cuts “Snoopy Waves” and “Offend Maggie” rank as two of their best-ever songs. The disc is business-as-usual for the 'hoof, who've, over the years, somehow managed to convince people their music is simple, silly, and sloppy. Satomi Matsuzaki's yelped, Broken English slogans (like, here: “Bunny jump! Bunny jump! Bunny! Bunny! Bunny Jump!”) seem to obscure the fact that Deerhoof actually play totally scholarly compositions, juggling polyrhythms as their interlocking guitar/drum parts display the kind of nerdy, super-tight complexity you hear on math-rock records.

New Bloods are a queer-punk trio from Portland who embody both Kill Rock Stars' past and its future. Openly inspired by original post-punk dames like Kleenex, Au Pairs, and The Raincoats, their gender politics and DIY attitude harkens back to the label's salad days. And, based in the label's new hometown, and playing individualist music of no fixed genre, New Bloods look likely to be a KRS staple heading forward. The band's brittle, barely-held-together racket takes its emotional cues from Osa Atoe's versatile violin, which, in the absence of guitar, forever sets the set's tenor. With each member singing, often over top of each other, The Secret Life shows a band that can be both beautiful and bratty, and sometimes both at once.