Eugene, OR · indie pop · dream pop

Japanese Breakfast

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Michelle Zauner writes about joy and grief with the same precision, over arrangements that keep getting more ambitious — gong hits and all.

Japanese Breakfast began in Philadelphia in 2013 as a side project of Michelle Zauner, who was fronting the emo band Little Big League at the time. The name comes from a GIF of the words 'Japanese breakfast' that Zauner came across, a phrase she thought would sound exotic to American listeners.

In 2014 Zauner returned to her hometown of Eugene, Oregon, to care for her mother, who was ill. She kept recording songs there, first to cope with the stress of caregiving and then, after her mother's death, with grief. Those recordings became the debut album Psychopomp, released on Yellow K Records in 2016.

Psychopomp's success led to a deal with Dead Oceans, which released Soft Sounds from Another Planet in 2017 and Jubilee in 2021. The albums trace the project's growth from home-recorded lo-fi indie pop into brighter, more orchestrated dream pop, with synthesisers, strings and horns entering the arrangements.

Jubilee brought Grammy nominations for Best Alternative Music Album and Best New Artist, and became the band's first album to reach the Billboard 200, peaking at 56. A fourth album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), followed in 2025.

Zauner's songwriting keeps returning to her mother's death and to Korean American identity, subjects she also explored in her memoir Crying in H Mart. She has composed video game music as well, and the band's live shows, featuring longtime members Peter Bradley, Deven Craige and Craig Hendrix alongside violinist Lauren Baba and saxophonist Adam Schatz, are built around her presence as frontperson, sometimes including a gong.

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