Japanese Breakfast

Japanese Breakfast is an American indie pop band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, formed in 2013. The project is fronted by vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter Michelle Zauner; she is joined in its current iteration by long-serving musicians Peter Bradley (guitar), Deven Craige (bass), and Craig Hendrix (drums, keyboards, backing vocals), as well as violinist Lauren Baba and saxophonist Adam Schatz, who have been with the ensemble since 2021. Zauner started the band as a side project in 2013, when she was leading the Philadelphia-based emo group Little Big League. She has said that she named the band after seeing a GIF animation of Japanese breakfast. She thought the term would be "exotic" to Americans, and that it would make others wonder what a "Japanese breakfast" consists of. In 2014, she returned to her hometown of Eugene, Oregon, to care for her ailing mother. She continued to record music and songs, first to cope with stress, then, after her mother died, with grief. The songs eventually became Japanese Breakfast's debut studio album: Psychopomp (2016), released by Yellow K Records. Its critical and commercial success led Japanese Breakfast to sign with the record label Dead Oceans, which released the band's second and third studio albums: Soft Sounds from Another Planet (2017) and Jubilee (2021). Jubilee was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album and Japanese Breakfast for Best New Artist at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards and became the band's first album to chart on the Billboard 200, where it peaked at 56. The project's fourth studio album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), was released in 2025.