Credit: Beth Ditto

Half way through a conversation about her ongoing zine on the inspirational Arkansas women she grew up with and Beth Ditto unexpectedly falls silent. After a while it becomes clear that it isn’t because of the topic, quite the opposite in fact. “I’m watching this thing happen, this total confrontation,” she says. “This man got out of his car and just started hitting another guy in his car… now that guy’s getting out... I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

Both loquacious and engaging, it’s perversely inappropriate that this act of mindless male road rage should stem the flow of thought of The Gossip’s singer, but she’s soon back on track. “That was unbelievable,” she concludes, and in the same breath: “So, anyway…” and we’re back to her Arkansas women.

Although fronting a critically acclaimed band, Beth Ditto’s day job is more than just being band leader. She’s become an underground icon for many: lesbian, feminist, big and proud, deeply sexy, and the owner of a searing, soulful voice as powerful as any Tuesday morning scene of London violence. What’s more, her band is seen, however simplistically, as the link between the riot grrrl movement of the early 1990s and the garage rock scene earlier this decade, most notably represented by touring-companions The White Stripes.

In many ways Ditto and her three-piece band, The Gossip, are quintessentially ‘underground’ – a term she unfailingly uses instead of ‘indie’, to make a distinction from the niche marketing of the major music-industry companies. Involved in creating a personally representative media through their own zines, and with various side-projects including other bands, they have, as their website states, a “life dedication to action, passion and drive”. But, explains Ditto, that’s not to say that she doesn’t sometimes pine for the quiet life: “The other day I heard that in the UK you guys have huge arms dealings, it’s like the fourth biggest supplier of arms in the world,” she says, on one of many unexpected but gratifying tangents that occur through our chat.

“And it made me think about the situation in Lebanon right now, and all the fucked up violence that’s going on, and I was thinking it would be so easy to become someone like my sister, who just goes to KFC for her and her husband, who stays home and watches television. Their biggest concern is how high their water bill is going to be that month. Sometimes I think that must be the easiest, nicest life to live,” she says. “But really, I don’t ever want to live that life because I think how… simple it must be.”