Mitski

Mitski, born Mitsuki Laycock in Mie Prefecture, Japan in 1990 to a Japanese mother and an American father whose State Department career moved the family through thirteen countries, spent a peripatetic childhood before settling in the United States at fifteen, attending high school in Alabama and Virginia and finishing school in Ankara, Turkey. She later adopted her mother's surname, Miyawaki.

She began songwriting at seventeen or eighteen, moved to New York in 2010 to study film at Hunter College, then transferred to Purchase College's Conservatory of Music to study composition. There she self-released her first two albums, Lush and Retired from Sad, New Career in Business, and met producer Patrick Hyland, who has worked on every record since.

Her early records moved from piano-and-orchestra arrangements toward the distorted guitars of Bury Me at Makeout Creek, released in 2014 on Double Double Whammy, after which she signed to Dead Oceans. Puberty 2 and its single "Your Best American Girl" broadened her audience considerably, and Be the Cowboy, with "Nobody," pushed further into synth-driven pop and character-based writing.

Laurel Hell (2022) reached the top ten in several countries, and The Guardian called her the best young songwriter in the US that year. She also co-composed "This Is a Life" with Son Lux for Everything Everywhere All at Once, earning an Academy Award nomination.

The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We followed in 2023, built largely around acoustic instruments and country-leaning arrangement; its single "My Love Mine All Mine" became her first to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Her eighth album, Nothing's About to Happen to Me, arrived in 2026, and her live shows remain notably formal, built from deliberate, rehearsed movement rather than conventional rock-show gesture.