Femme Fatales

Musician, performance artist and David Lynch’s muse is not a bad job title, and Chrysta Bell carries it off with aplomb. The filmmaker declared her ‘'the most beautiful alien ever' after seeing the torch singer perform more than a decade ago. In an Australian exclusive, Bell will perform tracks from her Lynch-produced debut album This Train for this year’s Dark Mofo Photograph: Supplied

The darkly thrilling, avant-garde Diamanda Galas been performing since she was fourteen, proudly embracing the complex and controversial with performances of Wild Women with Steak Knives (1980), Plague Mass (1991) Vena Cava (1993) which explored AIDS dementia and clinical depression and Defixiones, Will and Testament (2004), a tribute to victims of the Turkish genocides from 1914-1923. In 2008, she released a highly anticipated album Guilty Guilty Guilty, a compilation of tragic and homicidal love songs Photograph: Supplied

Music pulses through the veins of singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright, who has made music since childhood with her family including mother Kate McGarrigal and brother Rufus Wainwright. She released a highly acclaimed EP entitled Bloody Motherfu*king As*hole in 2005, followed by a self-titled debut. Then came I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings too, a tribute album to Edith Piaf and Come Home to Mama which she performed at Dark Mofo last year Photograph: Supplied

Surely one of the few to boast both an MBE and a Mercury Prize, PJ Harvey has had both fans and critics in raptures with her albums including Let England Shake (2011), Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000) and Rid of Me (1993). Both playful and provocative in her music, she’s also deeply private but apparently the English singer-songwriter paints, draws, sculpts, and writes poetry in her downtime. She played MONA FOMA in 2012 Photograph: Supplied

Also known as Annie Clarke, St Vincent is currently the darling of the indie art pop scene with this year’s self-titled album, not least because she declared Albert Einstein her style muse. The singer songwriter will shortly make her Saturday Night Live debut on on the season finale, but that comes after she played acclaimed shows alongside David Byrne at last year’s MONA FOMA 2013 Photograph: Supplied

One-time lead singer of the Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer is a frequent visitor to Mofo, having played in the Mofo supergroup in 2012 and returning again earlier this year for a series of acclaimed shows. She’s also well known for her outspoken stance on feminist issues, her highly successful albeit controversial crowd-funding campaign and her ongoing mission to keep music free for all Photograph: Supplied