Heavens to Betsy Return With 'Baby's Gone' — First Release Since 1994

Heavens to Betsy, the punk duo of Corin Tucker and Tracy Sawyer, will release Baby's Gone on 16 October via Kill Rock Stars — their first project since their 1994 studio album Calculated. The announcement arrives on the heels of a sold-out reunion show in Portland, Oregon this summer, the band's first performance in 32 years, and a newly announced US tour.

Baby's Gone is a compilation that pulls together previously unreleased material and long-out-of-print singles. The centrepiece is a 16-track demo tape recorded in February 1992 by Molly Neuman, who would go on to play in the band Bratmobile. The compilation also includes the 1993 These Monsters Are Real and 1994 Direction 7-inch recordings, long sought after by collectors of the riot grrrl movement — the Pacific Northwest feminist punk scene of the early Nineties. Neuman, who recorded the original demo, also wrote the liner notes for the new release.

Tucker, who later co-founded Sleater-Kinney, said Neuman understood that young women needed tools to express themselves and captured the band's first recordings when they were still college-aged. Sawyer, who played drums in Heavens to Betsy before going on to perform with the Husbands, the Flying Tigers and the Lies, said the subjects the band addressed in the Nineties feel even more relevant now, and that revisiting the material as adults and mothers was a fitting moment.

The album's 16 tracks span the duo's early catalogue. The full track listing: Good Good, Factory, Seek and Hide, Stay Dead, My Red Shelf, Ain't Never Goin' Back, Baby's Gone, My Secret, Me & Her, Monsters, Playground, Firefly, Direction, Get Out of My Head, The Ones, and Driving Song. "Firefly" originally appeared on Calculated. "Ain't Never Goin' Back" has been released as the first single.

Kill Rock Stars will issue Baby's Gone across multiple physical formats. Two special vinyl variants, a CD, and a cassette are planned, along with a limited edition release of the original demo tape featuring recreated artwork. The label, an independent based in Olympia, Washington, has long been associated with the riot grrrl and indie-punk communities.

The band's US tour opens on 16 October at the Fine Line in Minneapolis — the same day the album drops. Final tour dates for 2026 were announced in July, with a presale that began on 8 July. The Portland reunion show that preceded the announcement sold out.

For listeners who came to Tucker's work through Sleater-Kinney — the band she formed after Heavens to Betsy dissolved — Baby's Gone offers a chance to hear where her songwriting began. For those who were there the first time round, it brings a demo tape that circulated on cassettes in 1992 into a proper release 34 years later.

All facts per Rolling Stone, 19 August 2026.