Clyde Petersen: Riffing on the Unspeakable
This article is only a portion of the full article. If you are already a premium subscriber please login. If you are not a premium subscriber, please subscribe for access to all of our content.

A TRANSGENDER musician, animator, and filmmaker working in Seattle, Clyde Petersen has released ten albums with the band Your Heart Breaks. He regularly tours with Kimya Dawson, whose childlike voice sweetens the movie Juno’s soundtrack. Despite Petersen’s gentle guitar riffs and soft-spoken lyrics, his musical influences include jarring artists from the feminist punk movement known as Riot Grrrl, which emerged out of Olympia, Washington, in the early 1990’s. He has animated and directed videos for bands like Thao Nguyen & The Get Down Stay Down and the Shaky Hands. In 2010, Petersen released a documentary film, The Unspeakable, which explores the work of fifteen Northwest artists.