Across four decades, 16 studio albums, and over 15 million records sold, Indigo Girls continue to blaze the trail for generations of Queer artists in the mainstream. The Grammy-winning duo of Emily Saliers and Amy Ray began their career in clubs and bars around their native Atlanta, GA amidst a blossoming alternative music scene before signing to Epic Records in 1988. Indigo Girls' eponymous major label debut sold over two million copies under the power of singles "Closer to Fine" and "Kid Fears" and introduced the duo's signature harmonies and stirring, sophisticated songs to a dedicated, enduring global audience. Indigo Girls was the first of six consecutive Gold and/or Platinum-certified albums. Their latest record, Look Long, is a heartfelt and eclectic collection of songs that finds the duo reunited in the studio with their strongest backing band to date. "We joke about being old, but what is old when it comes to music? We're still a bar band at heart," says Saliers. "While our lyrics and writing approach may change, our passion for music feels the same as it did when we were 25 years old."
Committed and uncompromising activists, Saliers and Ray work on issues like racial justice and reproductive rights (Project Say Something), immigration reform (El Refugio), LGBTQ advocacy, education (Imagination Library), death penalty reform, and Native American rights (First Peoples Fund).
"As time has gone on, our audience has become more expansive and diverse, giving me a sense of joy," says Saliers. Recently, "Closer to Fine" featured prominently in Greta Gerwig's blockbuster film Barbie and introduced Indigo Girls' music to a new generation of listeners. Released in 2024, their critically-acclaimed documentary Indigo Girls: It's Only Life After All (directed by Alexandria Bombach) blends 40 years of home movies, raw film archive, and intimate present-day verité into a soulful career retrospective. A New York Times Critic's Pick, the documentary premiered opening night at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023 and went on to screen at SXSW, Tribeca Film Festival, and Hot Docs before releasing to Netflix. A third film, director Tom Gustafson's 2023 jukebox musical Glitter & Doom tells the tale of a whirlwind summer romance through inventive reimaginations of classic Indigo Girls songs. Glitter & Doom boasts a star-studded queer supporting cast featuring Lea DeLaria, Tig Notaro, Kate Pierson (The B-52s), RuPaul's Drag Race alum Peppermint, and even a cameo from Amy and Emily themselves.
While Rolling Stone describes them as "ideal duet partners," Indigo Girls' live performances aren't so much duets as they are community experiences--massive group singalongs together with their audience. To hear those collective voices raise into one, overpowering the band itself, one realizes the importance Indigo Girls' music has in this moment. In our often-terrifying present, we are all in search of a daily refuge, a stolen hour or two, to engage with something that brings us joy, perspective, or maybe just calm. As one bar band once put it, "We go to the doctor, we go to the mountains...we go to the Bible, we go through the work out." For millions, they go to the Indigo Girls: a creative partnership certain of its bearings, forging a way forward.