When Brittany Howard was 7 years old, she informed her Uncle Chad that she liked rock ’n’ roll. Her uncle asked what she meant by this. The future frontwoman/guitarist of the Alabama Shakes offered up Aqua, the colorful Danish group that gave the world the 1997 bubblegum pop hit “Barbie Girl.”

“It was like an atrocity,” she recalls of his horrified reaction with a chuckle on the phone from her home in Athens, Ala., during a rare break in the Alabama Shakes touring schedule. “He was like, ‘No!’ ”