Bikini Kill at The Wiltern

In October 1990, Kathleen Hanna (vocals), Billy Karren (guitar), Kathi Wilcox (bass), and Tobi Vail (drums) founded Bikini Kill in Olympia, Washington. While attending The Evergreen State College in Washington, Hanna, Vail, and Wilcox got to know one another. Hanna also published a fanzine called Bikini Kill for their first tour in 1991. The band composed songs together and promoted a female-centric atmosphere at their performances by encouraging women to approach the front of the stage and giving them lyric sheets. Hanna would also jump into the crowd to personally remove male hecklers. These male concertgoers would frequently verbally and physically harass Hanna during gigs while the tickets were still cheap and easy to buy.

However, the hecklers didn’t stop Bikini Kill from pursuing their passion. In fact, they only inspired the band to keep moving forward and stay true to their music.

Following the release of Revolution Girl Style Now, an independent demo tape, Bikini Kill launched the Bikini Kill EP under the independent label Kill Rock Stars. Fugazi and Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye produced the record, which started to build the band's fan base. In September 1993, the band released Pussy Whipped, its debut album. After releasing a split album, Our Troubled Youth / Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, and touring the UK, Bikini Kill embarked on a tour in London, England, to start working with Huggy Bear. Lucy Thane's It Changed My Life: Bikini Kill in the U.K. was a documentary film about the tour. The group collaborated with Joan Jett of the Runaways after their return to the States, whose music Hanna referred to as an early example of the Riot Grrrl branding.

A year after said collaboration, Bikini Kill was being called more and more as movement pioneers, and Riot Grrrl was getting all the media attention. The pioneer reputation endures, but as Hanna remembers, "[Bikini Kill was] very vilified during the '90s by so many people, and hated by so many people, and I think that's been kind of written out of the history. People were throwing chains at our heads – people hated us – and it was really, really hard to be in that band." Hanna called for a "media blackout" among Riot Grrrls because they felt the band and the movement were being misrepresented by the media.
Reject All American, the band's last album, was released in 1996. In 1997, Bikini Kill disbanded. In 2017, they started doing reunion performances.