(The) Judybats were an alternative rock band from Knoxville, Tennessee, active primarily in the late 1980s and early 1990s. First formed in 1987 after vocalist Jeff Heiskell, who with Ed Winters (guitar) had been playing acoustically in Knoxville as a duo, met Tim Stutz (bass) at a local bar called Hawkeyes Corner. Stutz, Johnny Sughrue (guitarist) and Terry Casper (drums) had known each other since high school and had been playing music together as a trio. Peggy Hambright, who was Stutz and Sughrue’s roommate, added keyboards, violin and vocals. The JudyBats played locally to large audiences before signing to Sire Records in 1990. The band took their name from a song written by a friend of theirs, which contained the line "punch me with a judybat" in a punning allusion to Punch and Judy shows.

The band contributed a cover of The 13th Floor Elevators' "She Lives (In a Time of Her Own)" to the 1990 tribute album Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson, followed shortly by their debut album Native Son. The official form of the band's name was never entirely clear — although the band was credited as The Judybats on the cover of Native Son, all of their subsequent albums listed the band's name as just Judybats, or sometimes JudyBats, although several CD singles from the later albums retained the word The.