3 Women Dominating Rock Music in Seattle Right Now

The city of Seattle is known for many things. Coffee, tech, athletes like Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton. But perhaps when you get right down to it, what the city is best known for is rock music. And rock is not a flame that keeps itself burning. It must be stoked and carried on.

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While the genre has been kept alive by artists from Jimi Hendrix and Heart to Pearl Jam, Sleater-Kinney, and Ayron Jones, there is a new wave of players who are carrying the torch today. Specifically, three women who front bands that draw big crowds and supply fans with the rock they crave.

Here below, we wanted to highlight that trio of rockers—indeed, these are the three women dominating rock music in Seattle right now.

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Jessica Dobson

With a new album out now, Deep Sea Diver is one of the fast-rising indie rock groups on the planet. They just got off the road after touring extensively with Pearl Jam and now their Billboard Heart LP is out in the world. But that’s just a sliver of the story when it comes to the band’s frontwoman Jessica Dobson, who is a master of the electric guitar and played with artists like Beck and The Shins earlier in her career. In 2020, the band’s LP Impossible Weight, which featured the likes of Sharon Van Etten, was one of the highlights of an otherwise rough year.

Shaina Shepherd

When grunge star Chris Cornell passed away about a decade ago, the world wondered what would happen to his iconic grunge band Soundgarden. Well more recently, fans have an answer. The group looks to be headed in a new direction with the enormous-voiced Shaina Shepherd. She boasts a vocal range that could fill the Grand Canyon and the style and swagger to back it up. Shepherd, who has been a mainstay in the city of late performing heartfelt ballads and jazzy joints, is also a snarling rock frontwoman. When she focuses her voice, it’s like a cannon-sized laser beam.

Molly Sides

When Molly Sides gets on stage to front her rock group Thunderpussy, she may wow with a voice like Grace Slick or with acrobatics like Cirque du Soleil. The group is an explosion of ideas and musical prowess that hasn’t been seen since the 1970s. A favorite of grunge gods like Mike McCready and Jerry Cantrell, Thunderpussy, which just dropped its new album West, is one of the biggest draws in the city. It’s because the people want to know what Sides will do next. Maybe she’ll perform the entire show on a trapeze made of microphones. Who knows? But it’s always worth the price of admission.