8 Sources to Find Great New Music by Women
Want to get into some new music but don’t know where to start? Here is a cheat sheet of my favourite places to find new music.
Audiofemme (http://www.audiofemme.com)
Audiofemme is a site that features music writing and criticism exclusively by women, though they feature music by people of all genders. The site does a track of the week, show reviews, Band of the Month, and artist profiles. They focus pretty much exclusively on American bands. I have found a bunch of my favourites there, including Now, Now, Daddy Issues, and Foxing (which was all from one excellent post!)
Bitch Media Blog (https://bitchmedia.org/music)
The Bitch media blog (accompanying the eponymous magazine) promises to feature music made exclusively by pretty much anyone who doesn’t identify as a cisgendered man. They don’t do reviews as much anymore, but there is a lot of thoughtful, feminist music journalism. Also, they have lots of great mixtapes made by guest curators on Spotify, with strong themes like Music as a Function of Vietnamese Memory.
BIRP (birp.fm)
The BIRP (acronym for the Blalock Indie Rock Playlist) has been an indie music mainstay for over a decade! BIRP promises “playlists featuring more than a hundred new & obscure artists for you to discover” and deliver on that promise. Usually clocking in around 110 new songs every month (beginning of ever month, usually the 3rd-4th), you gotta listen to a lot of garbage to get the good stuff. BUT I will say this—their offerings are diverse, pretty much everything except rap (and even then they do rap occasionally), and come one, thats a lot of new music every month that you can download for free. They playlists are offered without comment, and the songs are just listen alphabetically by song title. What I personally do is listen through the whole playlist, and rate the songs with the star rating system in itunes. After that, I take all the songs I marked as good (usually around 20 for me), and make a new playlist called “Best of BIRP July [or whatever month] 2019”
BUST Magazine (https://bust.com/)
The only print suggestion on this list, BUST is a great feminist magazine, and in every issue (they publish quarterly) they have a full section of music reviews. They review work by people of all genders. They manage to hit more mainstream/well known stuff, as well as smaller bands that are total gems. I’ve found their infamous 5-boob (instead of 5-star) rating system to be dead on, and their Staff Picks and Heavy Rotation suggestions are always solid.
GUM Girls Underground Music (https://girlundergroundmusic.com/)
GUM is one of my most recent discoveries on this list! Based out of LA, they produce a lot of content, assuring you will have lots of new artist to discover regularly. GUM covers a lot of genres, and mostly female and trans*-identified artists. In their own words, “Girl Underground Music is an online platform driven around the goal to provide underground artists a platform, and viewers a place to discover new music. Primarily serving new and local artists in the long lost art of interviews and reviews, GUM considers all genres and form of arts as submissions.”
Sled Island Music Festival (https://www.sledisland.com/)
Sled Island is an annual music festival in my second-favourite Canadian city, Calgary! (That is not a typo, I do love Calgary). The 2020 festival has been cancelled due to COVID, but they are doing their damnedest to support their line up and many Canadian artists nevertheless. I would suggest following them on Instagram in particular for new music ideas. Sled is great because they feature a ton of small Canadian bands. They also have a guest curator every year! This year is Sudan Archives, and past picks include Julien Baker, Peaches, and Kathleen Hanna!
The Other Woman Podcast/Radio (https://sohoradiolondon.com/show/the-other-woman-26-03-2020/)
The Other Woman is a radio show/podcast that was founded by Ruth Barnes, based out of the UK. It has had quite the journey, but the music picks and commentary have always been strong. Now hosted by a collective on Soho Radio, the hosts play new music by women of all genres as well as interviewing artists on the air. You can also find the most recent episodes to stream on Cheri Amour’s site, http://cheriamour.co.uk/on-air.
A small warning with this one - it was hard for me to track down the proper links/a full archive with one link (a lot of Soho Radio's were broken/messed up) so it might require a bit of hunting. Worth the effort!
Turntable Kitchen (http://www.turntablekitchen.com)
Turntable Kitchen can be hit and miss for me, though I’ve definitely found some winners there. It’s one of two sites on this list run predominantly by men (the other being the BIRP) listed here. If you can bear to deal with the kind-of-ridiculous feel (I swear—all their music writers are guys whose bios talk excessively about their love of craft beer and pour over coffee—that’s not a bio, that’s a list of crap you like). Their music is pretty samey—very on-trend, polished indie. But like I said, it’s hit or miss—you might find the hunt thrilling, and if you’re into food and coffee it can be a nice one stop shop for you!
Bonus —believe it or not, there’s not a lot of crossover from these sources overall. I find maybe 20% of what I consume overall from these sites can easily be found on any other of these sites, but for the vast majority of offerings its totally new and diverse, aka, tons of new music out there.
Read more on women and music
Audible Anger: Women in Rock Validate, and Honor, Anger
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: GERTRUDE "MA" RAINEY, BESSIE SMITH, AND BILLIE HOLIDAY by Angela Y. Davis
The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic by Jessica Hopper
Don't Lose Track: Vol. 1 : 40 Selected Articles, Essays and Q&As by Jordannah Elizabeth
Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music by Ellen Willis
Sound Out: Coming Home to Lavender Country
A version of this article was originally posted on theclosetfeminist.ca in September 2015, and in the zine catalogue y in August 2016. It has been updated for accuracy and to include new sources.
This article was updated Sept 2020 to include a link from Autostraddle that simply had to be part of this list.
