Kadri, Tuuli, Signe and Kaire — childhood friends from the village of Laguja, population 33 — formed Plixid in the mid-2000s under the guidance of their music teacher, Guido.

Between 2005 and 2010, they played punk parties, festivals, shopping centers and even delivered a now-iconic live performance on ETV morning show "Terevisioon."

The band split before the social media era that could have made them viral stars, and no official recordings ever surfaced.

That changes now. Viis, the boutique label founded by Estonian-born, LA-based musician Maria Minerva, released Plixid's first official album Tuesday — eight tracks plus two remixes by Minerva herself and local hyperpop artist Ines Daferrari.

"My Plixid fandom dates back to when I saw them on 'Terevisioon,'" Minerva told ERR. "It just had such great energy. These teenage girls doing avant-garde punk while Kiwa, Fabrique and Erkki Luuk promoted a Cabaret Derrida event. It was hilarious, but the song, their biggest hit 'Questions,' was so good. Everyone in Estonia knows the words, even if they don't know who sang it."

She called their "Terevisioon" performance a "meme before memes existed," adding that she watches it again monthly to relive the girls' energy. "There's very little in Estonia that's a bit crazy and over the top like this," she added.

Even years later, the band's tracks remained underground favorites. "Whenever someone played Plixid at a party, it always got people going," Minerva said. "Plixid just has that effect."

DIY release for DIY punk

These days, the members of Plixid are living low-key lives, all still in Southern Estonia. They're not after new fame, but were happy their old songs would finally be shared.

Some of their recordings are on YouTube, but until now, only one song, "Blond," had ever been officially released, on the 2010 compilation "Kohalik ja kohatu" — the same album that featured one of Minerva's first official tracks.

Minerva said she couldn't believe it. "They had so many good songs," she said. "I couldn't stop thinking about releasing them. And when I found out there were seven or eight tracks, not just three or four, the obsession only grew."

Around the same time, Minerva began a business management master's at UCLA.

"I've been making music since 2009, but I'm trying to take things more seriously now," she said. "I'm trying to apply my new outlook to every aspect of my work, so instead of wondering who could release Plixid's music, I could just do it myself."

She admits Viis isn't a traditional record label. "It's more like a small boutique label — something I can use to put out a record now and then," Minerva said.

"Next will probably be my own solo work, maybe music from friends too," she added. "I don't have big ambitions here, but it'd be fun to release something every now and then."

As plans came together to release Plixid's music, tracking down the band members was surprisingly easy.

"I just googled their names and found them on Facebook," she said, adding that they got to talking right away. "They were a little shocked at first, since this came out of nowhere and we'd never met before."

But Minerva and the members of Plixid clicked immediately, in part thanks to the LA musician's Southern Estonian roots.

"I think they saw I genuinely admire them, and had no ulterior motives," she said, adding she'd been sad to hear about the band's past negative experiences with critics. "People make underground music out of love, and I hope that really came across."

Punk rock girls

The album out Tuesday preserves the band's raw, lo-fi energy, releasing the original recordings mastered but unmixed. Some were recorded in Tartu's Ö Studio between 2005 and 2010; others were rough, low-quality demos.

"Leave them as they are, a little rough around the edges and lo-fi," Minerva said. "Hopefully it all works as a whole and everyone gets why this music is cool exactly as it is."

"Estonian women have been active in the punk scene since the very moment punk arrived in Estonia in the late 1970s, even if punk has meant different things to them in different decades," writes musicologist, punk historian and Estonian Academy of Music and Theater (EMTA) researcher Brigitta Davidjants about the latest release.

"Plixid were — and still are — pure riot grrrl!" she continued. "Of course, we needed a band like this then, and we still need one today. Because a girl's voice should always be heard a little more."

Two decades later, and with the help of a fellow Estonian artist and diehard fan, Plixid's long-lost DIY punk energy and raw, unlikely hits finally get their due — all the way from the tiny village of Laguja to LA.

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