About Us
SPINSTER is a radical feminist record label founded in 2018 and owned and operated by Michelle Dove & Emily Hilliard.
Grounded by our backgrounds in music, folklore, writing, and art, we support a diverse range of musicians who explore territory across the traditional, radical, and experimental.
SPINSTER and its releases have been featured by Aquarium Drunkard, The Guardian, The New York Times, NPR, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, and others.
Our current and future releases include compilation tapes centered around common themes and creative prompts, unearthed archival gems, groundbreaking debut releases by emerging artists, and innovative returns from musical heroines—all making unlikely connections across genres and forms.
SPINSTER releases are distributed worldwide to record stores by Redeye. Due to limited capacity, we are unfortunately unable to listen to all unsolicited pitches we receive, and do not consider demos or music that is previously released or already available to the public.
“Oh do you know her or do you not?”
Michelle Dove
Co-owner Michelle Dove is a writer, teacher and musician living in the North Carolina Piedmont. She works in the English Department at Duke University and teaches creative writing at Duke and Night School Bar. Music has always shaped her life and informed her writing, especially her debut collection of flash fictions, Radio Cacophony. Her music interests run the gamut of math rock to psych rock, riot grrrl to synth pop, queercore to Ethio-jazz, and are informed, in part, from her years as a DJ and manager of WUVT-Blacksburg, VA, and as the host of Heart & Drone on WHUP-Hillsborough, NC.
Emily Hilliard
Co-founder and co-owner Emily Hilliard is a folklorist, writer, media producer, and musician. She is the former West Virginia state folklorist and founding director of the West Virginia Folklife Program; her book based on that public humanities work, Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia will be out November 2022 with UNC Press. Her writing and research centers around feminism, domestic creativity, and labor, and the intersection of traditional, experimental, and radical culture; her diverse music interests tend to inhabit those same realms. Emily has been a DJ on college and community radio stations WOMM-Burlington, VT, WXYC-Chapel Hill, Washington, D.C.'s Radio CPR; she currently hosts True Leveller Radio on Berea College’s WBER.
