Riot grrrl is back. Do we need it more than ever?

On a win­try New York night at Home Sweet Home, a long and skin­ny sub­ter­ranean dive bar on Chrystie St between Bow­ery and Broome Street, a small infantry of bands begin their setup. 

Each has its own son­ic vibe and visu­al aes­thet­ic; DJ Sofi­iak is in town from Seat­tle, clad in an indie sleaze indebt­ed dress of bro­ken CDs wrapped togeth­er with rope. Nico Mac of Brooklyn’s Bad Sta­t­ic stands tall in a straight­for­ward rock & roll style – like Poi­son Ivy from The Cramps – while Gigi Bar­wald of head­lin­ing act t@b grrrl sits reposed on a kick drum in a blood-red leather trench. Femme punk and alter­na­tive dance anthems includ­ing Bratmobile’s rol­lick­ing ​‘Gimme Brains’ and Le Tigre’s dance num­ber ​‘Decep­ta­con’ pump out from scratchy speak­ers, mix­ing with the hazy, beer-scent­ed air. They are mem­bers of the mod­ern van­guard of riot grrrl – the women-led, proud­ly polit­i­cal post-punk genre that burned bright and fast just over three decades ago.

The move­ment start­ed out of the base­ments and DIY art spaces of Olympia, Wash­ing­ton in the ear­ly ​’90s, as sem­i­nal bands of the time like Biki­ni Kill, the afore­men­tioned Brat­mo­bile, Heav­ens to Bet­sey, and Excuse 17 carved out a space in the Pacif­ic North­west punk scene for women to express their dis­dain and anger towards misog­y­ny. Through mak­ing abra­sive gui­tar music, craft­ing fanzines and carv­ing out femme-first com­mu­ni­ty spaces, the move­ment quick­ly spread across the USA, rais­ing mid­dle fin­gers to the tra­di­tion­al­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed genre of punk and shun­ning any notions of respectabil­i­ty politics.

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But media atten­tion saw the move­ment emerge as a pop cul­ture trend, and riot grrrl grew larg­er than any­one intend­ed. Many of the bands had bro­ken up by the mid ​’90s, leav­ing its his­to­ry of com­mu­ni­ty activism, print zines, and punk shows that called for ​“girls to the front” con­signed to the mem­o­ries of those who were in the thick of the mosh­pits at the time.

These days, even the most obscure or under­ground move­ments of yes­ter­year can bloom with renewed inter­est on social media. The genre’s pol­i­tics, aes­thet­ics, and its ener­gy-push­ing son­ics have been bub­bling back up online and in under­ground base­ments world­wide over the past few years. Paired with widen­ing divi­sions world­wide and esca­lat­ing attacks on women’s rights – from the strip­ping of the Roe v. Wade uni­ver­sal right to abor­tion in the USA to the UK Supreme Court’s rul­ing that trans women should not be cat­e­gorised as women under the Equal­i­ty Act – it’s easy to feel that we need riot grrrl more than ever.

All of the bands present at Home Sweet Home had pre­vi­ous­ly met each oth­er through riot grrrl com­mu­ni­ties online, name­ly on Tik­Tok and Insta­gram, where a new gen­er­a­tion of femme punks bond over a shared love of the move­ment and its prac­tices. It’s where they dis­cuss fem­i­nist texts, share art and writ­ings, make zines, and form bands. 

Bar­wald was orig­i­nal­ly meant to go to law school, but then flipped path and pre­oc­cu­pied her­self by mak­ing music with t@b grrrl. ​“I thought it was a jump to go from law to music, but now it makes sense look­ing back.” Bar­wald always held strong polit­i­cal beliefs, hav­ing led a walk­out for gun vio­lence while in high school, but she ​“nev­er thought about music as inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal until I found out about the riot grrrl move­ment, and how jour­nal­ism and pol­i­tics became lyrics and music”.

Before grunge broke in 1991 with bands like Nir­vana and Pearl Jam, the Seat­tle riot grrrl sound was explic­it­ly femme-focused, with lead­ers includ­ing Kath­leen Han­na and Tobi Vail of Biki­ni Kill, and Alli­son Williams of Brat­mo­bile. They ran artist col­lec­tives and put on punk shows that cen­tred the safe­ty of young women, while cre­at­ing safe spaces from phys­i­cal and sex­u­al vio­lence both with­in the music scene and out on the street. Han­na goes into detail about the con­stant threat of vio­lence she and fel­low riot grrrls faced in her 2024 mem­oir Rebel Girl: My Life as a Fem­i­nist Punk. Inside are sto­ries of women being assault­ed in mosh pits at punk shows, pur­sued by stalk­ers, and one par­tic­u­lar­ly grue­some sto­ry of a room­mate who almost died after being attacked by a stranger who broke into their apartment.

Although many would like to pre­tend as if soci­ety is a safer and more accept­ing place for femme folk these days, the cur­rent crop of Riot Grrrls stress that this isn’t the case. Nico Mac, who sings in Bad Sta­t­ic and plays gui­tar with Bar­wald in t@b grrrl, also start­ed writ­ing music in col­lege and wrote one of her first songs, ​‘Peach’, after being harassed on the street.

“I’ve had a lot of expe­ri­ence with being cat­called, and almost got­ten into phys­i­cal alter­ca­tions with men about it. So I thought it would be a healthy way to get my rage out,” she says. ​“And that’s what riot grrrl is – giv­ing your­self a voice when you feel voice­less. When I write a song for Bad Sta­t­ic, it’s always been about writ­ing lyrics that res­onate with the per­son­al and political.”

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All these out­side influ­ences: ris­ing fas­cism in the Unit­ed States and beyond, a cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, the human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Pales­tine, and a back­ward trend of female auton­o­my and LGBTQ+ rights, make it seem as if riot grrrl is back to chal­lenge the grey­ing polit­i­cal cli­mate. How­ev­er, Bar­wald does not think that fits so neat­ly into that nar­ra­tive. ​“Peo­ple are becom­ing more fed up, for sure, but if pol­i­tics is the sole rea­son for riot grrrl to come back, it would have come back in 2016.” 

While it’s easy to give Trump­ism the cred­it for the return of riot grrrl, it takes blame away from a Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship era when riot grrrl saw the fruits of its renais­sance. ​“It was four years of hell, four years of bull­shit, and now we are back here again,” Bar­wald says.

While the likes of t@b grrrl are pro­vid­ing the genre with fresh faces, it’s not only new artists rid­ing its wave of inter­est. Sleater Kin­ney, arguably the most com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful band from the riot grrrl scene, orig­i­nal­ly broke up in 2006, before regroup­ing in 2015. They have since put out four crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed albums, includ­ing 2024’s Lit­tle Rope.

Biki­ni Kill played their first reunion shows in 2019, but the full reunion tour was repeat­ed­ly post­poned due to the pan­dem­ic. With Kath­leen Hanna’s 2024 mem­oir, the band final­ly got to fin­ish their world tour that year. All the while, clas­sic songs from the era, includ­ing ​‘Cool Schmool’ by Brat­mo­bile and ​‘Decep­ta­con’, have been gain­ing trac­tion on Tik­Tok feeds – the lat­ter alone has been used on near­ly 100,000 dif­fer­ent videos.

Alli­son Wolfe of Brat­mo­bile has noticed the uptick her­self. After the band reunit­ed in 2023 to play at San Francisco’s Moss­wood Melt­down fes­ti­val, they reis­sued their discog­ra­phy and played shows in Brook­lyn and Los Ange­les in 2024.

I first con­nect­ed with Bar­wald at Bratmobile’s show in Brook­lyn last April, where we both noticed the array of ages in the crowd. ​“It was real­ly heart­warm­ing,” Bar­wald says. ​“See­ing the old punk heads, the new par­ents bring­ing their kids down to teenagers. I noticed how every type of per­son was there, it felt like every­one was notic­ing the comeback.”

Wolfe has seen how younger gen­er­a­tions are tak­ing to riot grrrl talk­ing points, even if start­ing a move­ment was nev­er part of the orig­i­nal plan. ​“I start­ed notic­ing this rein­ter­est in riot grrrl around 2010 when I moved to LA and was asked to speak to col­leges. But that was some­thing we nev­er dreamed of – we nev­er thought that this would ever be con­sid­ered a cul­tur­al touch­stone or ref­er­enced in some sort of aca­d­e­m­ic way,” she explains. ​“We were just hav­ing fun, and it’s not like we were think­ing of start­ing a rev­o­lu­tion in our ear­ly 20s. But it takes time for some­one else’s aca­d­e­m­ic analy­sis to put the work into context.”

And although not all bands fit the riot grrrl genre label, its influ­ence can be felt far beyond. Aus­tralian rock band Amyl and the Snif­fers, front­ed by Amy Tay­lor, have polit­i­cal songs and have called out preda­to­ry behav­ior by men at their shows, much like Kath­leen Han­na did in old Biki­ni Kill shows. UK out­fit Lam­bri­ni Girls’ recent album Who Let the Dogs Out fea­tured songs enti­tled ​“Cun­tol­ogy 101” and ​“Filthy Rich Nepo Baby”, pok­ing fun at themes of patri­archy and cap­i­tal­ism and have described the record as ​“a par­ty for pissed-off, gay, angry sluts”. LA punk group The Lin­da Lin­das went viral with their song ​‘Racist Sex­ist Boy’, which was record­ed when the band mem­bers were in their ear­ly teens and are cur­rent­ly on a head­lin­ing world tour.

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It’s not all love for the renais­sance though. Han­na has often dis­tanced her­self from the riot grrrl move­ment over the years, and has said she does not want the move­ment to have a come­back. ​“Start your own thing, start some­thing that speaks to your gen­er­a­tion, start some­thing smarter and bet­ter.” In her mem­oir, Han­na dis­sect­ed how ill-equipped she and oth­ers in the scene were at tack­ling the over­lap­ping sub­ject of race and trans­gen­der iden­ti­ties – top­ics that are at the fore­front of the move­ment today. 

“We just have to active­ly work inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty for­ev­er,” Bar­wald says. ​”It’s more than gen­der, it’s more than race. It is and always has been about com­mu­ni­ty, and com­mu­ni­ty includes everyone.”

Nico Mac shares respect for the ini­tial move­ment, though is con­scious of what soci­ety needs out of riot grrrl today. ​“Address­ing the issues is bet­ter than sweep­ing them under the rug. Being a riot grrrl in 2025 means giv­ing a plat­form to the peo­ple who might have been left out orig­i­nal­ly. We know bet­ter now.”

Wolfe agrees. ​“We are respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in our com­mu­ni­ties for­ev­er. It’s not like your art or your pol­i­tics are done when your youth is done,” she says. ​“Fem­i­nism needs to exist as long as patri­archy, racism, and homo­pho­bia exist. What­ev­er inspires you, and what­ev­er terms and words and stuff you either can find or cre­ate, there is always a need for cre­at­ing new eras.”

Kurt Such­man is a free­lance writer. Fol­low them on Insta­gram.

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