Kim Deal

A leading figure among female musicians on the alternative rock scene, Kim Deal was the bassist and occasional vocalist for the Pixies, one of the most influential bands of the post punk era. Deal's voice, equal parts fragile and ribald, offered a sense of delicacy and balance to the bullhorn shrieks of the band's singer and chief songwriter, Black Francis. Their five albums, released between 1987 and 1993, gave rise to such bands as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Weezer and countless others who employed their unsettling but often glorious aesthetic. Behind the scenes, however, Deal was locked in a struggle with Francis to get her own songs heard on the Pixies' records, which eventually led to their breakup in 1993. She subsequently formed the Breeders with her twin sister, Kelley, producing an unexpected hit with Last Splash (1993). However, the Breeders' time in the spotlight was short-lived following Kelley Deal's arrest for heroin possession, which set in motion a series of sporadic releases with several variations of the group between 2001 and 2009. During this period, Deal buried the hatchet with Francis and began touring to worldwide acclaim with the Pixies, though she left the band in 2013 to reform the breakthrough lineup of The Breeders, with whom she recorded the 2018 comeback albumAll Nerve. Kim Deal's tenure in two hugely popular bands from the early days of the alternative movement, as well as her fiercely independent nature, made her a role model for a generation of rockers, both male and female.