Following her keynote address at the ROCKRGRL Music Conference last November in Seattle, Indigo Girl Amy Ray gave the eager crowd a preview of her debut solo album, Stag, performing "Lucystoners," its name taken from a turn-of-the-century feminist Lucy Stone. What caught the media's attention was the chorus: "Janny Wenner, Janny Wenner/Rolling Stone's most fearless leader/Gave the boys what they deserve/but with the girls he lost his nerve." But a closer look at the song's lyrics reveals that Wenner's merely a symbolic figure in Ray's scathing critique about sexism in the music biz. Ray's just as impassioned on Stag's other tracks (released on her own Daemon Records label), which address Matthew Shepard's murder, a tribute to activist friends in "On Your Honor," romantic turbulance, and confronting one's own dark side. Ray also gets a little help from the Butchies, the Rock*A*Teens, 1945, Joan Jett, Kate Schellenbach (ex-Luscious Jackson) and Josephine Wiggs (ex-Breeders).

"Black Heart Today" (acoustic)

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"Late Bloom" (acoustic)

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