“When are periods coming?!” Paulina Vazquez (drums/vocals) asks her bandmates Carrie Carter (bass/vocals) and Mitchella Phipps (guitar/vocals) during an interview on the leftist podcast Trillbilly Worker’s Party, based in their shared mountain town of Whitesburg, Kentucky. They all cackle like a coven in-sync. Carter, Phipps, and Vazquez formed their “contraceptive rock” band Slut Pill in early 2018 around the same time they founded Girls Rock Whitesburg, East Kentucky’s first Girls Rock Camp, an international arts and social justice organization for female, non-binary, and trans youth that couples musical education with workshops in healthy relationships, leadership, and sex-ed. Spiritually, Slut Pill shares the values and vibe of Girls Rock: empowering and vulnerable, playful and no-fucks-given, skillfully executed but with a DIY off-the-cuff attitude—and above all, brashly feminist. Influenced by bands like Chastity Belt, Vivian Girls, and noncompliant, Slut Pill’s sound ranges from riot grrl agro to riff-heavy rock to spirited beach punk, and is energized by their close friendship. Slut Pill’s eponymous debut album comes after shows with Philly’s Long Hots, Birmingham’s Lee Bains III + the Glory Fires, Irvine, KY’s Senora May, and a December 2019 gig opening for Kentucky country darling Tyler Childers. Stylistically, Slut Pill has more in common with power rippers and fellow all-women trio Long Hots, and the anti-fascist punk of Lee Bains, but Carter, Phipps, and Vazquez are all grounded in traditional music too. Phipps, a Whitesburg native, is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist and teaches traditional music in after-school and summer youth programs. Carrie Carter was born and raised in an old-time music family in Red Bush, KY, and continues to play and teach fiddle lessons. And Paulina Vazquez, originally from Omaha, NE, grew up dancing classic Ballet Folklórico Mexicano at her aunt’s Latin-American museum and now performs with Cornbread & Tortillas, a collective of Latin-American and Appalachian artists.