The marriage of female vocals and electronic music has been riding high since Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte introduced Donna Summer to the Moog synthesizer back in the 1970s, and girl-led acts like Blue Hawaii and Empress Of are showing this on the 2013 festival circuit. Shot here at SXSW (Austin, Texas) and Coachella (Indio, California) by photographer Laura Coulson—who also caught up with Solange, Jessie Ware, Sasha Spielberg, Haim's Alana and Io Echo's Ioanna Gika—these women are proving the four-boys-in-a-band model a thing of the past. Spielberg, who sings in Wardell, is reminiscent of a young Grace Slick; here the band's track “Eli” accompanies the series of portraits. “Seeing all of the girls and their bands live got me really excited and spurred me on to document what I feel is a huge year for girls in music,” explains Coulson. “My unofficial theme was, 'girls who are killing it in 2013'. But quite simply, all of these artists are making really powerful and important music that people should be excited about.” We reached out to a selection of the talent to suss out their influences.