Jill Cunniff

Nobody can call Jill Cunniff lazy. In the roughly twenty-five years since she taught herself to play guitar at age fourteen, the bassist and vocalist has played in at least three basement punk bands, gigged with and won the approval of the Beastie Boys, cofounded the genre-defining alt-girl eclecti-group Luscious Jackson, played in two spin-offs from that group (including the neo-disco outfit Cooler Kids), AND written songs for artists like Emmylou Harris. Whew! One would think all that genre-hopping would wear a girl out. Not Cunniff, though. In 2007, sixteen years after Luscious was born and the same year that band released a greatest hits album, Cunniff released her first solo album, City Beach, a sunny, dreamy, island-hopping (Manhattan included), bossa-loving breath of summer.