Japanese Breakfast is an indie rock band headed by Korean-American musician, director, and author Michelle Zauner. Around 2005, Zauner first played under the moniker Little Girl, Big Spoon. As a student at Bryn Mawr College, Zauner fronted Post Post, an indie pop band with other students from Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges. She waited tables while trying to get her music career off the ground.
In 2011, Zauner started the Philadelphian emo band Little Big League. The band released two albums, These Are Good People (2013) and Tropical Jinx (2014). She fronted the band until 2014, before returning to her hometown of Eugene, Oregon in 2013 as her mother was diagnosed with cancer.
The first Japanese Breakfast release was June (2013), the result of a project where Zauner and Rachel Gagliardi recorded and posted one song every day for the month of June. These songs were posted daily on the Tumblr blog ‘rachelandmichelledojune’. As Japanese Breakfast, Zauner also participated in a song project with musicians Gabrielle Smith, Florist, Frankie Smith, and Small Wonder. All of their songs were posted daily on the Tumblr blog ‘may5to12songs’. Zauner released her songs from the project on Bandcamp as a digital album entitled Where Is My Great Big Feeling? in June 2014, followed shortly by American Sound in July. Both were released as the cassette tape American Sound/Where Is My Great Big Feeling. Re-recorded versions of several songs from these releases appeared on the first two Japanese Breakfast albums. While in Oregon with her family, Zauner continued recording as Japanese Breakfast.
In April 2016, Japanese Breakfast released its first studio album, Psychopomp, under Yellow K Records. Zauner described the debut album as a confrontation of her mother’s death as well as “dark and heavy-handed”, although she had a desire to make the music urgent and “sonically upbeat”. In June 2016, it was announced Japanese Breakfast had been signed to Dead Oceans. The same day, Zauner released the video for the song “Jane Cum”. The video, directed by Adam Kolodny, was inspired by the film The Craft, and depicts Zauner and three friends gathering objects for rituals in the woods.
In May 2017, Zauner released the single “Machinist” and announced her second studio album, Soft Sounds from Another Planet, which released in July. The music video for “Machinist” was directed by Zauner, in collaboration with Adam Kolodny. It stars Zauner as a woman who falls in love with a robot and tears apart her spaceship trying to build a body for it. The song “Boyish” was released as a single in June. A third single from the album, “Road Head”, was released in July 2017. In October a music video for “Body is a Blade” was released. It was animated using old family photographs and video of Zauner visiting locations from the photos. She described it as “a really personal mixed media piece, almost like a moving scrapbook”. On February 13, 2018, the music video for “Boyish” was released. It depicts a girl going to a high school dance, where Zauner and her band, accompanied by fellow indie musician Leslie Bear, are playing a set. The video was directed by Zauner, who described it as her “favourite video yet”. A game entitled Japanese BreakQuest was released alongside Soft Sounds from Another Planet. The game features all songs from the album as 8-bit MIDI tracks which were created by Peter Bradley, and the game was developed by Zauner and game designer Elaine Fath.
In 2018 it was revealed that Japanese Breakfast would be providing the soundtrack for indie game Sable. The game was initially set to be released in 2019, but was delayed twice. It it set to be released on September 23, 2021. In 2019, Japanese Breakfast released two singles under the W Hotels music label, “Essentially” and a cover of “Head Over Heels”.
On March 2, 2021 Zauner released the song “Be Sweet”, the first single from the third Japanese Breakfast album, Jubilee, which was released by Dead Oceans in June 2021. The self-directed music video for “Be Sweet” features Marisa ‘Missy’ Dabice and Zauner acting as FBI Agents tracking aliens. In March Japanese Breakfast performed the songs “Be Sweet” and “Jimmy Fallon Big!” on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. “Posing In Bondage”, was released on April 8, 2021. The video, also directed by Zauner, features Harmony Tividad as a grocery store employee. The third and final single from Jubilee, “Savage Good Boy”, was released in May 2021. The video, directed by Zauner, features actor Michael Imperioli as a billionaire in a bunker, with Zauner as a young woman he has convinced to live underground with him. It is a prequel to the video for “Posing in Bondage”. In June a cover by Japanese Breakfast of their song Be Sweet in the fictional Simlish language was released for the eleventh expansion pack for the The Sims 4.
