Mitski

For every aspect of human emotion, there’s a Mitski song to cover it. The brilliantly defiant singer-songwriter can turn the knottiest feelings into ribbons of metaphors, and her empathetic touch reverberates throughout the many genres she’s made a home in: caustic rock (Puberty 2), mystical folk (The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We) and captivating art-pop (Be the Cowboy) are just a few. Born Mitsuki Laycock in Mie Prefecture, Japan, in 1990, Mitski travelled frequently around the globe as a child and developed a keen sense for knowing when she did not belong, which was often. Music—which she started writing at 18—was a salve for the pain of otherness, a way to examine humanity’s rough edges as both observer and participant: “I wanted to express something real and human in me,” she once told Apple Music. Her songs might be about personal moments, but Mitski writes lyrics that pierce the most distant of hearts (“Nobody”) and sings with a deep timbre of knowing sorrow.