Rainbow Girls

Rainbow Girls trace back to an open mic in Isla Vista, California, near UC Santa Barbara, where Erin Chapin, Caitlin Gowdey, Vanessa Wilbourn and Cheyenne Methmann began performing together as a quartet. In the summer of 2011 they busked and slept on couches across Europe, putting out self-recorded demos before returning to California with drummer Savannah Hughes.

The band moved north to the California countryside outside San Francisco in 2013 and released its crowdfunded debut album, The Sound of Light, that same year. After Methmann left in 2014, the remaining four members recorded a second album, Perceptronium, issued in 2015.

Hughes stepped back from full-time touring in 2016, leaving Chapin, Gowdey and Wilbourn to carry on as the trio described here. Their next album, American Dream, released in 2017, marked a shift toward a more acoustic folk sound.

A 2018 video of the trio covering Alvin Robinson's "Down Home Girl" drew several million views online, prompting a full covers album, Give the People What They Want, released in 2019, and leading the band to sign with a booking agency and new management.