Boston, MA · alt-rock

Pixies

3 upcoming festivals

Loud-quiet-loud's inventors — the band your favorite band ripped off, with 'Debaser' through 'Where Is My Mind?' still setting the terms.

Pixies formed in Boston in 1986, with Black Francis on vocals and guitar, Joey Santiago on lead guitar, Kim Deal on bass and David Lovering on drums. Their sound joined surf and blues-derived guitar figures to abrupt shifts between hushed verses and bellowed choruses, with lyrics drawing on surrealism, biblical imagery, science fiction and Spanish phrases.

Records including Surfer Rosa, Doolittle and Bossanova made them one of the most influential American alternative bands of the late 1980s, widely cited by the guitar bands that followed in the 1990s. The group split in 1993 and reunited in 2004; Deal left in 2013, and the band has continued to tour and record with other bassists since.

alt-rock