Peaches

As dance music embraced crunching guitars and camp theatrics and bore the electro-clash sub genre in the early 2000s, former school teacher and member of the folksy trio Mermaid Café, Merrill Nisker, turned herself into Peaches, a sleazy neon queen of filthy disco pop. Taking her name from the Nina Simone song Four Women, her synth experiments led to her moving to Berlin and signing with German label Kitty-Yo, who released debut album The Teaches Of Peaches (2000). In a blitz of strutting beats, outrageous smut and a post-feminist defiance, Peaches' live shows exploded with blood-spitting, pelvic-thrusting, crotch-grabbing, counter culture freakiness as the album Fatherf***ker (2003) earned her cult status. She has featured on tracks with Chicks On Speed, Iggy Pop, Pink, Christina Aguilera and Flaming Lips and recruited, Beth Ditto, Feist, Josh Homme and Joan Jett for guest appearances on third album Impeach My Bush (2006), before teaming up with Simian Mobile Disco, Soulwax and Digitalism on I Feel Cream (2009). A wildly provocative force of nature, Peaches' performance on BBC1 show Top Of The Pops was never aired because it was deemed too lewd.