Teen punk band The Linda Lindas go viral with amazing library performance of Racist Sexist Boys

If anybody ever claims that punk music is dead, point them towards The Linda Lindas.

The Los Angeles-based teen band has gone viral after they performed their original song Racist Sexist Boys at the LA Public Library.

The four-piece, made up of Eloise, 13, Lucia, 14, Bela, 16, and 10-year-old drummer Mila, performed a set at the library as part of the TEENtastic Tuesdays series for AAPI Heritage Month.

During the concert, The Linda Lindas performed powerful covers of Bikini Kill’s Rebel Girl and The Muffs’ Big Mouth, but it was their song Racist Sexist Boys that has gained the most attention on social media.

Mila explained: ‘A little while before we went into lockdown, a boy in my class came up to me and said that his dad told him to stay away from Chinese people. After I told him that I was Chinese, he backed away from me. Eloise and I wrote this song based on that experience.’

Lead singer Eloise then shouted: ‘So this is about him and all the other racist, sexist boys in this world!’, before the band launched into their song, eviscerating the ‘jerkface’ who says ‘mean stuff and [closes] your mind to things you don’t like’. 

One video, shared with the caption ‘This is the first band I will be RUNNING to see once I get my second shot’, has already been viewed 1.9million times, and the video has been shared by a number of huge rock stars.

Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna noted that Mila was wearing one of the band’s charity t-shirts, tweeting the performance link and adding: ‘Thanks to The Linda Lindas for not only making great music, but also  helping girls in Togo, West Africa get educations by wearing @tees4togo shirts in this amazing video!!!’

Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein said The Linda Lindas were ‘giving me life’, while Questlove and Blink 182’s Travis Barker both shared the performance on Instagram.

Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello also called Racist Sexist Boys the ‘song of the day’.

While The Linda Lindas may have just gone viral this week, they’re already super successful and way, way cooler than most bands three times their age.

They have been going for a few years now and back in 2019, The Linda Lindas, who are half Asian, half Latinx, were handpicked by Bikini Kill to open one of their reunion shows at the Hollywood Palladium after the riot grrrl legends saw their cover of Rebel Girl.

Amy Poehler was also impressed, and cast the girls in a cameo in Netflix’s Moxie!, with the group performing Rebel Girl at a party for protagonist Vivian and her new friends who came together to fight sexism at their high school.

The Linda Lindas have also played with Best Coast and Alice Bag, and wrote and performed the original song Claudia Kishi for the documentary The Claudia Kishi Club, about the influence of The Babysitter’s Club character on Asian-American representation.

The band released their self-titled EP in 2020, which is available to stream – so we suggest jumping on this bandwagon before they headline Glastonbury.

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