Girl In A Coma

San Antonio's Girl in a Coma are not your run-of-the-mill power trio, and they don't have your run-of-the-mill pop-punk audience. For one thing, bassist Jenn Alva, drummer Phanie Diaz and singer-guitarist Nina Diaz (Phanie's younger sister) are all women, two of them lesbians; for another, they're all Mexican American. Their fans -- especially the hometown ones -- tend to reflect those demographics. When the band got together around the turn of the millennium, Nina wasn't even a teen yet. They were called Sylvia's Radio at first, but they eventually named themselves after a Smiths tune; a few years later, Morrissey himself would invite them to open a tour. They self-released a demo EP in 2005, and then in 2006 Joan Jett signed them to Blackheart Records after seeing them play as part of a TV documentary on young Latin bands. They've since put out three albums on the label: Both Before I'm Gone in 2007, Trio B.C. in 2009, and Adventures in Coverland in 2010. The latter features remakes of songs by a wide variety of artists (Ritchie Valens, Selena, Joy Division, The Velvet Underground, Patsy Cline and more), and thus usefully maps out the gothic Chicana perimeters of their sound.