Kevin Bronson on March 18th, 2021

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* Updated with full EP stream.

Ronna Reason’s life as an electro-punk provocateur dates to the Chicago scene of the 1980s when she played bass in the feminist bands. She eventually matriculated to L.A., where she played in other bands, and since the early 2000s she has run Kingsize Soundlabs with her husband, producer Dave Trumfio, and was part of the team that opened the boutique bar/hotel/studio complex Gold-Diggers.

Her fondness for the edgy sounds of the ’80s remains undiminished — as does her energy, as evidenced by the self-titled EP, “Ronna Reason,” that she’s releasing Friday via the new label Damaged Disco.

It’s highlighted by the single “Panic Town,” a track that sounds almost defiantly dated — so much so that it can be read as a statement that the political and social problems that fueled underground music in the Reagan years have done nothing but fester in the past three-plus decades. Indeed, Reason says the track initially was conceived in the ’80s with collaborators Crown Victoria and Eric Zimmerman (H-Gun Labs), only to be reshaped now with Bow Wow Wow’s Annabella Lwin guesting on vocals and DJ Z-Trip on the turntables. The video, directed by Zimmerman, nods Malcolm McLaren’s “Buffalo Gals,” as Big Takeover notes.

(Reason also wrote about Lwin in a Women’s History Month feature last week in SPIN.)

The EP’s second single “American Queen” and its video take a pointed swipe at American materialism, and the third single, which arrived this week, is “Do It Again,” a bright, old-school disco jam. Never stop doing it, right?

||| Watch: the video for “Panic Town,” “Do It Again” and “American Queen”

||| Also: Stream the EP in full