The Throwing Muses Are Back

Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses. / Photo via OST/Getty Images

You could say alt-rock is one of Boston’s enduring exports: It’s been 40 years since Throwing Muses’ self-titled album came out, and yet the pioneering band is still going strong, having released its 11th album, Moonlight Confessions, last year and coming home to the Paradise Rock Club on April 4.

They’re not the only band from Boston’s golden alt-rock era attracting young music aficionados with their unwillingness to become pure nostalgia acts (see: the Lemonheads’ 2025 LP, Love Chant; Juliana Hatfield’s 21st solo album, Lightning Might Strike, also released last year; and Buffalo Tom’s 2024 album, Jump Rope). “They don’t want to just do their big hits again; they want to come up with something new,” says George Knight, morning host at Emerson College’s WERS 88.9, Boston’s go-to station for alternative rock, new and old.

But their big hits are still appreciated: Founded by Newport, Rhode Island, stepsisters Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly in 1981, Throwing Muses excelled at writing intensely personal lyrics accompanied by music that could be spiky or sweet, or both at the same time. They signed with the influential British record label 4AD in the mid-’80s, followed closely by the Pixies—which opened the floodgates for legions of other Boston artists to strike it big. “Boston at the time was not only a vibrant scene, but it had more musical diversity than other cities like Seattle, where it was all ‘grunge’ bands,” says Adam “Adam 12” Chapman, currently the executive producer of 98.5 the Sports Hub’s Toucher & Hardy show and the program director of Rock 92.9. Back in the 1990s, he was a DJ at Northeastern’s college radio station and the late, great alt-rock colossus WFNX, where he would play local bands that ranged from power pop to ska-punk to jazz-rock. Chapman also points out another important feature of Throwing Muses and other local acts: The bands had women in them. “That was a big deal. It wasn’t the norm back then,” Chapman says.

It sure is now, with much of today’s most exciting new indie rock—from Mitski to Momma—made by women. The resemblance is partly what’s attracting younger fans to old-school alt-rock—that and a full-circle appreciation for the genre’s killer sound. Knight, for example, has seen this zeitgeist shift with his student interns and the younger DJs at the station. “What resonates with the students is stripped-down, honest rock music. It’s not super slick,” he says. “These days, they get bombarded with remixes and stuff with a bazillion samples. But these are bands that pick up their instruments and just play, and I think that goes a long way.”