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.