'Crimson Wave' Is the Upbeat Period Anthem You've Been Long Awaiting

Behold: the music video for “Crimson Wave,” a Clueless-referencing song about periods by Seattle pop-punk feminist band Tacocat. (You’re welcome if you won your round of Internet Feminist Bingo after reading that sentence.) And this music video has it all: dancing crabs, mermaids, a guy in a shark costume reading a tabloid…

Tacocat spoke to Rookie about the song earlier this year and had some wondrous things to say about female-centric music and the power of parody:

EMILY NOKES [vocalist]: Instead of channeling how super-angry certain things can make you feel, we express our feminism by being more like, “Dude, things are so fucked up sometimes, and people write the dumbest shit.” In my experience, making jokes about that kind of stupid stuff has made people check themselves more than when people yell at them about it…

LELAH MAUPIN [drummer]: If we were playing in a smaller town five years ago, the same thing would happen to me every time, without fail: Some dude would be like, “Girl drummer? I’ve never seen one!!” I’d just be like, “Well, here I am!” But that doesn’t happen as much anymore. I feel like today, if you don’t have a girl in your band, no one cares about your music.

EMILY: And not because every band should have a token woman in their band, but because I think all-dude bands are played out.

ERIC [RANDALL, guitarist]: To me, the most frivolous genre out there is Boring Dude Rock.

As someone who has had to endure countless hours of 20-something hipster dudes in plaid loafing around and making generic noodly sounds with their guitars, this is a statement I heartily agree with.

Tacocat’s new album NVM is out later this month; as a glowing endorsement, may I add that the band has also penned songs about street harassment, UTIs, eating Peeps, and Burning Man. A perfect antidote to all the Boring Dude Rock out there.