The Donnas

With every female pop star posing with guitars, it's good to hear girls who actually play them. But the Donnas don't just play guitars, they rock them. Not ironically, either, but with serious riffs, dirty denim and cowbells. The Donnas are doing their part to keep rock in the parking lot, where it belongs.

The baddest girls in San Francisco are back, gum snapping, jeans riding up, Wet 'n' Wild
flaking from their fingertips. There's something comforting about this raucous four-girl
group's dependence on the tight, hard riff and its vision of heaven as a 7-Eleven parking lot.
Thirteen condensed blasts of power pop zip by like billboards on the open road, and the
themes are mined from the bedrock of pop concerns -- they want you ("Take M... More >

On this beefed-up sprint to the major-label gold, their shallow attitude makes up for their skinny voices and vice versa. Getting laid can be a healthy character adjustment in singers who don't have the muscle to force themselves on anybody tougher than an a&r man who admires their songwriting. It's all been said before, but few penis carriers put it so consistently or succinctly. "Met a shy guy from Knoxville, Tennessee/High school yum yum give me some Hennessey." Or if that isn't legal enough for you, how about "Don't wanna be your friend/Don't try to take me home/This won't happen again/Just take me to the backseat"? (Grade - A-)