Music of Olympia, Washington

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The port city of Olympia, Washington, has been a center of post-hardcore, anti-folk, and other youth-oriented musical genres since the late 1970s. Before this period, Olympia's The Fleetwoods had several Billboard chart successes between 1959 and 1963. Olympia saw a rise in feminism in the music industry, where artists commonly addressed rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, patriarchy, classism, anarchism, and female empowerment in their songs.^[1] It was a center for the riot grrrl movement of the early 1990s, which featured Bikini Kill and Bratmobile.^[2]

Olympia's downtown Capitol Theater hosted the punk and indie-rock International Pop Underground Convention in 1991 and the Yoyo-A-Go-Go festival in 1994, 1997, 1999 and 2001.^[3] The city has several record labels and companies, including K Records and Kill Rock Stars; Kill Rock Stars has signed Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Unwound and Elliott Smith.