I recently came across a post on some music forum or another that asked about the greatest sibling acts in rock history. There were about a dozen of the usual suspects mentioned multiple times – AC/DC, Van Halen, the Allmans, the Beach Boys and so on and so on.
Among that group of common favs, one of the bands was not like the others. Heart. Heart has been around for almost as long as I have been around. I grew up listening to their music. So I’m a little surprised that it took me a beat or two to realize they were the only commonly-mentioned band that had sisters rather than brothers at its core.
I actually don’t think that any other band featuring sisters was championed in that brief discussion. I don’t recall any band with a brother and sister mentioned either. (That particular sub-category suffered a major blow when we learned the truth about the White Stripes.)
Therefore, according to one obscure, relatively short online chat, the only girl who ever roped a sibling into a rock band of note, was Ann Wilson, who got her sister Nancy to join up with Heart on guitar.
Clearly, this is an incomplete history.
11 great rock bands built on sisters
In his mammoth tome Music: A Subversive History, writer Ted Gioia makes a pretty persuasive argument that women’s voices have been oppressed and undermined in music since humans began beating on rocks with sticks. So it isn’t the least bit surprising that every gender-neutral list you are apt to find about the greatest rock this or the greatest rock that is loaded with Y chromosomes.
Even in pop music, where women now dominate the culture, men ruled until fairly recently. And rock and roll, for all its outstanding qualities, has not exactly been a welcoming place for girls with guitars.
From the Runaways to Bikini Kill, early female-led rock bands suffered the “novelty” tag. Times may have changed to a degree but the double standard is still going strong, as Amy Taylor sings about in Amyl and the Sniffers’ 2024 hit “U Should Not Be Doing That.”
So the number of bands may not rival their brother band counterparts, but the music? The music is pretty damn awesome.
Here are eleven rock and roll sister acts that are well worth a listen.
The 20th century pioneers
The Pleasure Seekers
The “novelty” label had diminished by the start of the 21st century, but female-fronted bands still faced an uphill climb in corners of the rock universe most associated with masculinity.
We aren’t discussing sister-brother bands today, but consider the battles that a band like Halestorm has had to fight to claim their rightful place as one of the best alt metal acts out there. Halestorm is fronted by Lzzy Hale. Her brother Arejay plays drums.
They wrote their own songs. They played their own instruments. Their songs – “What a Way to Die,” “Never Thought You’d Leave Me,” “Gotta Get Away,” – are as good as any early garage rockers from the mid-‘60s. They were playing the same Detroit venues that subsequent rock stars like Ted Nugent and Bob Seger played.
But The Pleasure Seekers were ahead of their time. After a brief rebranding as the hard rock band Cradle, the Quatros ended the band and Suzi went on to build her solo career in the UK. She had two Number 1 hits in England with the glam rock-producing team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, and the sisters have occasionally played together at reunion events.
Fanny
June and Jean Millington began playing rock and roll together right around the same time as the Quatro sisters. It took them a few more years to land a record deal, but when they did in 1970, their band Fanny began cranking out melodious hard rock.
They released five albums between 1970 and 1975. They got great reviews but it seemed as if the public still wasn’t ready to hear women singing rock and roll.
That was about to change almost as soon as Fanny disbanded in 1975. On their final album – 1975’s Rock and Roll Survivors – they needed a new guitar player to replace June. They brought in a woman who knew a little something about playing in a rock band with your sisters … Patti Quatro.
Heart
Heart was the breakout act. Ann Wilson had one of the great voices in rock and roll. Nancy was a top-flight rhythm guitar player. Their debut album, Dreamboat Annie, was a smash, featuring songs that would become rock staples like “Magic Man” and “Crazy on You.”
That would be the beginning of a long run of success that saw six of their albums reach the top ten and seven singles do the same. Two of their 1980s hits – “These Dreams” and “Alone” – were Number 1s. With more 35 million record sales, Heart is among the most successful female-fronted rock bands of all time.
The Bangles
Sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson teamed up with Susanna Hoffs to form the Bangles in the early 1980s. Vicki played guitar while Debbi was the drummer. Their first album featured the jangly pop rock minor hit “Going Down to Liverpool.”
They built on that sound with their next album – 1986’s Different Light. That album was a smash with major hits “Manic Monday” and “Walk Like an Egyptian.” The latter stayed at Number in the USA for a month as 1986 turned into 1987. It was the Number 1 single of 1987.
The Bangles successfully blended a punk rock sensibility with the poppier side of ‘80s New Wave and for a brief period, were major players in ‘80s rock. The band wouldn’t last all that long, but its impact is still felt today. “Walk Like an Egyptian” remains one of the best known rock songs from the ‘80s and routinely appears on “best of” lists.
The Breeders
Kim Deal was already a crucial figure in ‘90s alt rock as a foundational member of the Pixies. When that band broke up, she turned her attention to a side project with her sister Kelley. Breeders essentially began as an avenue for Deal and Throwing Muses' guitarist Tanya Donelly to explore their own sound apart from their bands. After releasing Pod in 1990, Kelley joined for the EP Safari.
The first full-length album with the sisters was 1993’s Last Splash. It would eventually go platinum and its lead single “Cannonball” came to be regarded as a seminal ‘90s’ alt track. Several hiatuses interrupted their momentum over the years, but the band has continued to play together.
Their last album, 2018’s All Nerve, features that same nervy melodic energy that they have always brought to their music.
Turn of the Century Transition
The acts I chose for this list split into two convenient halves – five pre and five post 2000 acts. But there was an eleventh band.
Tegan and Sara
Identical twins Tegan and Sara Quin released their atmospheric debut Under Feet Like Ours just as the millennium came to an end. The album didn’t do much commercially in 1999, but songs like “Our Trees” and “This is Everything” announced a powerful new voice on the indie rock scene.
They would evolve their sound in the following decade, never totally abandoning their rock roots, but moving into synth pop and finding a larger audience. 2012’s “Closer” was a modest hit. A couple years later, they had a hit with their techno stomper “Everything is Awesome” from The Lego Movie.
Expanding Horizons in the New Century
The “novelty” label had diminished by the start of the 21st century, but female-fronted bands still faced an uphill climb in corners of the rock universe most associated with masculinity.
We aren’t discussing sister-brother bands today, but consider the battles that a band like Halestorm has had to fight to claim their rightful place as one of the best alt metal acts out there. Halestorm is fronted by Lzzy Hale. Her brother Arejay plays drums.
They do not fit today’s topic but Halestorm is a prime example of the way in which female rockers have been able to expand out in all directions. Over the past 25 years. Building on the foundation laid by pioneers like the Pleasure Seekers and Fanny, these sister acts may still fight against stereotyping, but they have not let that prevent them from releasing excellent rock music in all sub-genres.
Haim
Featuring the three Haim sisters – Danielle, Este, and Alana – Haim has been one of the most critically successful sister acts in rock music.
They have been nominated for five Grammys, and though they have yet to win, Women in Music Pt. III (2021) and Evermore (2022) were both up for Album of the Year. Last year, I Quit was nominated for Best Rock Album. They have claimed the Best International Band prize from the influential British music mag NME twice.
From “Falling,” on their debut album in 2013, to last year’s “Relationships,” Haim continues their off-kilter, melodic strings of catchy, cool songs that dive deep into … you guessed it … relationships.
Larkin Poe
The hard southern blues rockers have always drawn comparisons to the Allman Brothers. But Rebecca and Megan Lovell dive deeper in classically swampy American blues than the Allmans ever did. After splitting with their sister Jessica, the Lovell Sisters rebranded as Larkin Poe.
They gradually morphed from a folk band with rock leanings into a blues rock powerhouse that still retained some of those Americana/Folk roots. “Bleach Blonde Bottle Blues” from Venom & Faith (2018) pushed the blues into classic territory.
By the time they reached 2022’s Blood Harmony, Larking Poe was clearly one of the best blues rock outfits on the planet. That disc claimed the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album.
Skating Polly
Kelli Mayo was eleven years old when Skating Polly’s first album, Taking Over the World was released. She had already been playing with her older stepsister Peyton Bighorse for a couple of years. That first album is a revelation.
Though clearly the work of juveniles, there is little that is actually juvenile in the oddball, catchy tunes. The first track, “Rainbows,” establishes Keli’s persona right up front, and they establish a recurring pattern of sharing lead vocals with Peyton chanting out the simple and powerful “Will Cut You” on the second track.
More than ten years later, they were doing the same thing, only doing it much better. Chaos County Line opens with Kelli’s explosive cowpunk “Baby on My Birthday.” Two songs later, Peyton responds with the great rock and roll track, “Hickey King.”
In concert, the sisters trade off playing guitar and bass while Kelli’s brother Kurtis, provides the drums. X’s John Doe chose their three-song EP, New Trick, as one of the best albums of the 2010s.
The Warning
It must be hard to live up to the online hype that surrounded the Warning’s viral video cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” Guitarist/vocalist Daniela Velez was 14 at the time. Her younger sisters Paulina and Alejandra played drums and bass. Alejandra recited the prayer in the song – a child reciting a child’s prayer in one of the most well-known metal songs ever recorded.
Over the past decade, the Mexican trio has proven they are not a fluke or a … dare we say … novelty. Daniela has a powerful presence fronting the band and Paulina is a sensational drummer. (Callback to that Ted Gioia history of music – women were the original drummers before the instrument was coopted for military use.)
They are continuing to develop their own hard rock sound right up until “Kerosene,” the final track on their latest release, Everything’s Falling.
The Linda Lindas
The Linda Lindas lit a fuse when they performed at a public library in Los Angeles five years ago. The oldest member of the group at the time, guitarist Bela Salazar, was 16. The youngest, drummer Mila de la Garcia, was 11.
One song screamed out by bass player Eloise Wong, written by Wong and Mila de la Garcia was based on a racially motivated bullying incident Mila had experienced. “Racist, Sexist Boy” struck a nerve. The band was launched.
They soon attracted the attention of major players in the music world and the entertainment world writ large. Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna became a mentor. Amy Poehler promoted the band. They would eventually release several excellent rock albums, headline their own tours and open a national tour for Green Day, alongside heavyweights like Rancid and Smashing Pumpkins.
Mila’s older sister, Lucia, writes and sings many of their most melodic pop rock hits, while Wong keeps the punk quotient high. Salazar and Mila fill in between. Their latest album, 2026’s Gotta Get Out, continues their evolution.
So if you’ve got a couple of daughters at home and you’re tired of hearing them fight, invest in a couple of guitars. Let them work out typical adolescent sibling angst through rock and roll.
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