The Donna's

Brett Anderson is the singer of the band, Allison Robertson is the guitarist, Maya Ford is the bass player, and Torry Castellano plays the drums. As best friends, they formed in the eighth grade to play for their school’s “Day on the Green.” The only girl band in their town Palo Alto, California, they were relatively unknown until they were out of high school. They are all self-taught musicians and practiced in Castellano’s garage nearly every day during high school.

Towards the end of their high school days, while they were still known as “The Electrocutes”, they decided to create another band (with the same members) which they would use to play softer tunes without distorting the metal queen image of The Electrocutes. To further distinguish the difference between the two bands, they all took matching “Donna” monikers, where all of their names were Donna, and their last names were the first initial of their last name (Brett Anderson became Donna A) which they used only when performing as “The Donnas”. Although they initially planned on dropping The Donnas after a while and sticking with The Electrocutes, they changed their minds after high school and stuck with the Donnas instead, while still keeping their Donna names. They are sometimes described as a punk band, but the band itself denies any kind of affiliation with the punk rock movement.