K.Flay

Born Kristine Meredith Flaherty in Wilmette, Illinois, K.Flay has been developing since the mid-2000s a personal style that blends alternative hip-hop, indie rock, electro and pop rock, featuring a spoken-sung vocal delivery, tense choruses and very direct songwriting. The project took shape while she was studying at Stanford, first with independent releases such as the mixtape Suburban Rap Queen in 2005, then the EP K.Flay in 2010 and the mixtape I Stopped Caring in ’96 in 2011. After a stint at RCA and the EPs Eyes Shut (2012) and What If It Is (2013), K.Flay returned to independence with Life as a Dog in 2014, an album that marked a move toward more rock-oriented structures. That shift was confirmed by subsequent releases: Crush Me (2016), Every Where Is Some Where (2017), Solutions (2019), Inside Voices / Outside Voices (2022) and Mono (2023). K.Flay has also crossed over into other scenes, working with artists from Louis the Child to X Ambassadors, Grandson and Tom Morello, while touring with AWOLNATION, Third Eye Blind and Imagine Dragons. In 2022, a viral infection caused hearing loss in her right ear and changed her relationship to sound — an experience that partly informs her most recent songs.