Kathleen Hanna

Kathleen Hanna (Born 12 November 1969) is an American musician. She is the former lead singer of Bikini Kill (early 1990s) and current member of feminist electronic band Le Tigre

Kathleen Hanna (Born 12 November 1969) is an American musician. She is the former lead singer of Bikini Kill (early 1990s) and current member of feminist electronic band Le Tigre. In 1998, Hanna released a solo album under the name Julie Ruin. Hanna has also written about feminism and art and has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, appearing on records by Atari Teenage Riot, Joan Jett, the Rickets, Green Day, Internal/External and Mike Watt, to name a few.

Kathleen was born in Portland, Oregon and attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in the late 1980’s. She studied photography, worked at a domestic violence organization, and became involved with the burgeoning art scene in Olympia, doing spoken word performances and booking bands and exhibits for an independent feminist art gallery called Reko Muse. During this time period Hanna formed her first band, Amy Carter, with Reko Muse co-founders Heidi Arbogast and Tammy Rae Carland. Her second band, Viva Knievel, toured the United States and upon returning to Olympia Hanna began collaborating with fellow Evergreen student and zinester Tobi Vail after seeing a performance of The Go Team, a band made up of Vail, Billy Karren, and Calvin Johnson (later of Beat Happening and K Records fame). Hanna and Vail worked on a zine called “Revolution Girl Style Now” and, together with another Evergreen student, Kathi Wilcox, wrote the zine “Bikini Kill” as a response to sexism in the punk rock scene. The three women decided to form a band to personify their ideals and recruited Vail’s bandmate Karren as the fourth member, naming their band after their zine.