I’ve been playing guitar since I was 15. I still remember my first electric guitar, a trusty little Ibanez that served me well for many years. My early guitars heroes included such brutal ax shredders as Joe Satriani and Kirk Hammett, melodic tricksters such as John Frusciante, and minimalistic delay-addicts such as the Edge. They were as you might well have noticed, all men. I took my music with a large dollop of testosterone.

But turn the leaf to a new century, and I’ve found that the guitarists that’s been catching my eye are women, and I’d like to shout out to a few of them.

Leslie Feist. Holy shit, this woman has got it all, elastic voice, monstrous stage presence and a wicked guitar-playing style. Started off in punk bands, she subsequently lost her voice and had to learn how to sing melodically and play gutiar. Now that she’s rocketed into the big time, her music videos don’t really showcase her ax-wielding skillz. Still, these uber-cool videos from a few years back in Paris (which makes them even more uber-cool) shows off her chops.

When I was a Young Girl:

Secret Heart:

Annie Clark, the beating heart of the band St. Vincent, longtime collaborator of that paragon of sensitive virtuosity Sufjan Stevens, shows she’s no slouch with the ax. In concert, I saw her apologize for the way she held her guitar, “it’s a little too prog rock but that’s the only way I know how to hold it.” She’s the kind of musician where I can imagine her sucking down a bottle of gin whilst reading Anais Nin. Here, she rips out to a cover of the Beatles, “Dig a Pony” playing it low down dirty blues style:

Marnie Stern. Eddie Van Halen may have patented finger-tapping as his signature flourish, but Southern California noise rock virtuoso Marnie Stern has made it her signature motif. Her songs are a tsunami of finger-taps that warps around the bleary-eyed vocals playing havoc with her so-cal cheerleading demeanour:

Kaki King. She makes sounds out of a guitar that I have no fucking clue as to how she did it. And it helps if you stare at the camera with contempt whilst playing those ridiculously difficult riffs. Oh lordy:

Mark on 03/18 said: