Read this: SPIN’s revealing Bikini Kill oral history

Given the still-bracing excellence of the band’s music, it’s never a bad time to turn one’s thoughts to Bikini Kill, the pioneering riot grrrl group that blazed a trail out of Olympia, Wash., in the early 1990s.

Yet this year serves as the 20th anniversary of Bikini Kill’s self-titled debut EP, and to mark the occasion our friends at SPIN have published a probing oral history of the band by Jessica Hopper, who spoke with the group’s members as well as with peers such as Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.

“I think, by and large, people hated Bikini Kill,” MacKaye told Hopper, which provides some indication of the depth of her examination.

Next week, Bikini Kill is set to reissue that first EP on its own Bikini Kill Records, in a package that contains a new fanzine and excerpts from the ‘zines the band put out back in ye olde, pre-blog days. (Listen to the music now at the group’s Bandcamp page.)

Reissues of the remainder of Bikini Kill’s catalog -- including its excellent 1996 swan song, “Reject All American” -- are promised in the future.

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