This year, spandex snaps back.

The Iowa Women’s Music Festival has been a local institution for 16 years — but for the first time, the performances aim to draw in a more diverse crowd with a wide range of musical tastes.

The fest will feature hip-hop and dance-music acts, including the all-female, all-Iowan cult hip-hop group, Leslie and the Lys.

The festival started in 1993 and showcased predominately folk music, or women with acoustic guitars, as many often think of it. Subsequently, the festival developed a reputation for being synonymous with over-30 female acoustic and folk-rock. This year’s lineup may destroy that reputation.

Leslie and the Lys will take the stage at the Mill, 120 E. Burlington St., for the “Pop, Hip-Hop & ’80s Dance Party” at 8 p.m. Saturday. MC Kim-Char Meredith and ’80s dance cover band Jodie Foster Connection will also perform.

Ames native and frontwoman of Leslie and the Lys Leslie Hall is a spandex aficionado, Internet celebrity, and self-proclaimed vegetarian junk-food lover. The Iowa cultural icon has created a brand for herself with “gem sweaters,” metallic stretch pants, and her unique breed of Garage Band-produced hip-hop with heavy lyrical focus on corn-fed pride, arts and crafts, and sweater bedazzlement.

Hall caught the eyes and ears of the art-school crowd since the beginning of her career as a “ceWebrity” — gaining fame from her online gem-sweater modeling pictures. She is likely to attract the same attention when she brings her famously lively and colorful performance to this year’s festival. Backup dancer “Ly” Ramona Muse says Hall can get so “in the zone” when performing that she has to make sure she doesn’t accidentally kick anyone in the face.

As Hall puts it, “It’s basically like a poor man’s version of Britney Spears’ Circus tour — but better.”

“I wouldn’t say come to my performance-art show, but I do think what we do [onstage] is colorful art, and I wouldn’t call ourselves a band,” Hall said. “I’d say it’s more like an act.”

The band — or whatever — will be sure to bring that pizzazz to the second day of the annual Iowa Women’s Music Festival, which has events happening all weekend. Friday’s comedy night fundraiser will feature headlining comedian Poppy Champlin and musician Lojo Russo at 7:30 p.m. in Old Brick, 26 E. Market St. The suggested donation is $8 to $20 with the understandable side note, “More if you can, less if you can’t.”

The events will carry on through Saturday with free performances in Upper City Park from noon to 5:30 p.m. Highlights include festival headliner and Grammy nominee Michelle Shocked and Hawaiian MC Kim-Char Meredith.

The festival will close with an “All Women’s Jam Session” at the Mill, in which female audience members are invited to sing and play onstage with the aforementioned performers. The suggested donation for the dance party is $5 to $15.

Andre Perry, the booking agent for the Mill, says that although this is not the first time the venue has hosted the event, he doesn’t know what to expect with this year’s slew of performances.

“When you have Leslie [and the Lys] playing, it’s definitely going to be crazy,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’ll be weird and crazy, and it’ll definitely be a good time.”

Leslie and the Lys are very excited to bring some glamour to 2009’s festival. Muse said the band was rejected from 2008’s festival and assumed it was because the music didn’t fit into the archetypal acoustic mold. Muse said she and Hall started a new band for the sole purpose of getting into the festival.

“Leslie and I are working on a new folk album, it’s a country album,” she said. “We came up with this band because we couldn’t get into the Iowa Women’s Music Festival last year. We thought we had to create the same kind of music that the festival is known for.”

On the contrary — Leslie and the Lys’ female-fueled hip-hop music managed to catch the festival organizers’ attention this year. Laurie Haag, an event organizer, says she helped create the community that started the Iowa Women’s Music Festival more than 16 years ago.

“It was intentional to have Leslie Hall in the festival because she plays different music from the other acts,” she said. “We get a reputation for being a folk-music festival. When we found Leslie in Ames, we were very excited about her hip-hop performance thing, and it seems like she’s generating a lot of buzz — she’s fairly well-known, and younger people really like her.”

Haag emphasized that the festival is meant to celebrate all areas of women’s culture, not only the folk-music aspect. She thinks the festival is important because women remain underrepresented in music. She hopes that the event will create a place in which female musicians can get the deserved opportunity to perform and showcase their talents.

“Until we see women represented to the degree that they should be, I think our festival will continue to focus on women,” she said.

Haag stresses that although women may be underappreciated, they are as important to music as men. Perry, Hall, and the women from Jodie Foster Connection agree that in the male-dominated world of music and rock ’n’ roll, women rock just as hard as men. Muse said the Iowa music scene is evidence of that.

“I think that Iowa has hidden pockets of good music, and girls are involved in it just as much as men,” she said.

It is important to keep the festival focused on Iowa performers, she said. Female Iowans have headlined the event since the beginning, nearly two decades ago, she said. This year’s lineup features women from Ames, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, the Quad Cities, and Iowa City.

Perry said that the festival is a great opportunity to recognize women’s involvement in the local scene.

Hall aims to prove that Iowan female musicians have talent and glamour with her show on Saturday. She is confident that attendees will not be asking for any refunds.

“That’s a guarantee that you’ll like the show,” she said.