Kimberley Ann "Kim" Deal (born June 10, 1961) is an American singer, songwriter and musician, best known as the former bassist and backing vocalist of the alternative rock band Pixies, and the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist for The Breeders. Deal joined Pixies in January 1986 as the band's bassist, adopting the stage name Mrs. John Murphy for the albums Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa. Following Doolittle and The Pixies' hiatus, she formed The Breeders with Tanya Donelly, Josephine Wiggs and later introduced her identical twin sister Kelley Deal. The Pixies broke up in early 1993, and Deal returned her focus to The Breeders, who released the platinum-selling album Last Splash in 1993.

Deal was born in Dayton, Ohio. Her father was a laser physicist who worked at the nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Kim and her identical twin sister Kelley were introduced to music at a young age; the two sang to a "two-track, quarter-inch, tape" when they were "four or five" years old, and grew up listening to hard rock bands such as AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. When Deal was 11, she learned Roger Miller's "King of the Road" on the acoustic guitar. In high school, at Wayne High School in Huber Heights, she was a cheerleader and often got into conflicts with authority. "We were popular girls," Kelley explained. "We got good grades and played sports." Living in Dayton was for her like living in Russia: a friend of Kelley's living in California used to send them cassettes of artists like James Blood Ulmer, Undertones, [Elvis] Costello, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie [and the Banshees]. "These tapes were our most treasured possession, the only link with civilization".  As a teenager, she formed a folk rock band named The Breeders with her sister. She then became a prolific songwriter, as she found it easier to write songs than cover them. Deal later commented on her songwriting output: "I got like a hundred songs when I was like 16, 17 ... The music is pretty good, but the lyrics are just like, OH MY GOD. We were just trying to figure out how blue rhymes with you. When I was writing them, they didn't have anything to do with who I was." The Deals bought microphones, an eight-track tape recorder, a mixer, speakers, and amps for a bedroom studio. According to Kelley, they "had the whole thing set up by the time we were 17". They later bought a drum machine "so it would feel like we were more in a band".  Following high school, Deal went to seven different colleges, including The Ohio State University, but did not graduate from any of them. She eventually received an associate degree in medical technology from Kettering College of Medical Arts and took several jobs in cellular biology, including working in a hospital laboratory and a biochemical lab.

Ask a question about this article.
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?