Michelle Zauner Leads Japanese Breakfast’s Indie Pop Sound
By James Moreau | 25 Oct, 2025

Zauner’s personal story of identity and loss is woven throughout Japanese Breakfast’s captivating discography.

Japanese Breakfast is the misleading name of a Philadelphia-based indie pop band led by Korean American musician Michelle Zauner.

In 2022 the group earned Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best Alternative Music Album with Jubilee.  Its breakthrough album, which peaked at number 56 on the US Billboard 200 chart, was led by “Be Sweet” amassing over 88 million streams on Spotify –  the most of any song.

While Jubilee had more upbeat synthpop elements, their previous albums explored grief, earning a shoegaze classification.

The online video game Japanese BreakQuest 2017’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet included their track with the most viewed music video, “Boyish.”

Their debut studio album Psychopomp was released in 2016.  It features the bright single “Everybody Wants To Love You” which explores her relationship with another woman.

This year Japanese Breakfast released its fourth studio album For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women).  As with many others, the music video for the lead single, “Orlando In Love” was directed by Zauner.

Also in 2025 “My Baby (Got Nothing At All)” was included on the soundtrack of the A24 film Materialists.

Japanese Breakfast composed the soundtrack for the 2021 video game Sable, including the dream pop single “Glider.”

The band’s thorough discography has earned 2.2 million monthly Spotify listeners and 557,000 Instagram followers. Beyond music Zauner wrote the memoir Crying in H Mart, a 2021 New York Times bestseller for 60 weeks.  It chronicles her Korean identity, her mother’s passing, and how that led to Japanese Breakfast’s first album.