The Breeders

The Breeders are an American alternative rock band based in Dayton, Ohio, fronted by Kim Deal and her twin sister Kelley Deal. The band was first formed by Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly in 1989. Originally intended as a side-project for Deal and Donelly while still in their full-time bands Pixies and Throwing Muses respectively, The Breeders quickly became Deal's primary recording outlet. The original line-up also included bassist Josephine Wiggs of The Perfect Disaster, and drummer Britt Walford of Slint. The band has had several lineup changes over the years, with frontwoman Kim Deal being the band's sole continuous member; Deal's twin sister Kelley Deal joined in 1992, and has remained in the band ever since. By 1992, The Breeders became Deal's full-time band. The Pixies broke up the following year, followed by Donelly leaving to start her own band Belly. The Breeders debut album, 1990's Pod, though not a commercial success at the time of release, received widespread critical acclaim from music critics, as well as from Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, who cited Pod as one of his all-time favorite albums, while Stereogum ranked it #14 on their 2012 list of Steve Albini's best produced albums. After the departures of Tanya Donelly and Britt Walford, joining Kim Deal and Josephine Wiggs as new additions to the band were Kelley Deal on lead guitar and Jim Macpherson on drums, making up The Breeders' best-known line-up, who went on to record the band's most commercially successful album, Last Splash in 1993. The album went on to be certified platinum by the RIAA, and is best known for its hit singles "Cannonball", "Divine Hammer", "Saints", and "No Aloha".A year after the success of Last Splash, drug and alcohol issues forced the band into hiatus in 1994, while both the Deal sisters did separate stints in rehab in the following years. During the band's hiatus, Kim Deal formed the short-lived alternative rock band The Amps, recording a single album, Pacer in 1995, before eventually changing the band name back to The Breeders. In the late 1990s, Kim and Kelley reformed The Breeders with a new line-up (including members of the band Fear) and released two more albums, Title TK in 2002 and Mountain Battles in 2008. In 2013, Kim and Kelley had announced that the "classic" line-up (including Josephine Wiggs and Jim Macpherson) had reunited for the first time since the 1990s for a new series of tours celebrating the 20th anniversary of the band's hit album Last Splash. They have since released their fifth album All Nerve in 2018, the "classic" Breeders line-up's first full-length album together since 1993's Last Splash.