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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