Boy-fronted girl bands?

Those of us who like women in popular music, tend to favor listening to, well, bands that feature women musicians. Like the wonderful (and slightly misnamed, as they play pop, too) Girls Rock Radio, "...features the music of women artists, all-girl and girl-fronted bands." The same is true of Jennifer Corday's Girl Rock, or any random feminist/women-centric music blog. It's always all-girl bands, girl-fronted bands, and female solo artists.

But this makes sense, right? A male-fronted band wouldn't be much for women! I thought so, too - then I saw this:



Harmonica aside, it struck me that I had never seen a band with all female instrumentalists and a male singer before. This is interesting...

Now, there are lots of bands with a sole female singer, many bands with a 'token' (if you will) female instrumentalist, plenty (but not enough!) all-girl bands and bands with one male instrumentalist, and a very few bands with a more equal gender representation. But how many bands with a sole male singer?

Patriarchists don't mind male bands with a female singer. "She's just the singer," they say, "Anybody can sing. She's just there to look hot." (You don't often hear that about male singers, of course...) A token female is okay, too - especially if she's just the bassist. All-girl bands - well, there aren't any really popular ones, and they're not any good, anyway. But a boy-fronted girl band? That's a big, big problem! Men can't be 'just the singer'!

At least, that's the only explanation I can find for the almost complete lack of that particular band line-up!

There are a few male soloists who have, and often exploit, a female backup group, but Elvis and the Sweet Inspirations doesn't count here. And neither does this. I'm talking about a reversal of the guy-band-who-happens-to-have-a-chick-singer phenomenon - an band who's only male member is 'just the singer'.

After spending a large amount of time searching the internet and asking a number of people who know about these things, I found one reference to a defunct jazz ensemble, lots of off-one performances (like the S-K/Vedder stuff) and a grand total of three bands. And two of them may very well fall under the category of soloist+backup singer. First:

Jens Lekman, who loses points for naming the band after himself and for having all of the women dress in white, but they are standing evenly in a line, and have non-trivial horn parts, so... maybe.

Next, The World Provider, which is a very weird name for a fairly weird band:



And finally, there's Shlonk. They fit the criteria admirably:


(I'm not sure what this song is about, by the way - I doubt they actually want people to give their children guns... can somebody who not as lyric-dense as I am figure this one out?)

I suppose I should also mention Huggy Bear - near the end of their existence, their guitar player left, leaving just the male singer. Plus, I really like this song!


Any boy-fronted girl bands I have blindly overlooked? Is there some secret society that I missed? Does anybody else think that the extreme lack of such bands is odd/annoying?