Kristi Michele

Kristi Michele is a British singer-songwriter whose work draws on folk, psychedelic music, cabaret, indie pop, Broadway show tunes, Brill Building pop, gypsy jazz, and torch-song traditions. Her songs range from gentle acoustic pieces to arrangements built around layered vocal melodies, ragtime-style piano, glockenspiel, and auto harp. They often use imagery of forests, birds, and Viking boats, and her lyrics combine theatrical humour with long-form folk storytelling.

Background and influences

Her voice is described as having a nostalgic, vintage quality, with comparisons to Billie Holiday, Maddy Prior, and early vaudeville performers. Her songwriting also invites comparison with artists such as Joanna Newsom, Regina Spektor, Cat Power, Joni Mitchell, Cole Porter, and Blossom Dearie. Early influences include Rodgers and Hammerstein, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Salt-N-Pepa, and her later development is shaped by The Beatles, Harry Nilsson, Björk, and Vashti Bunyan.

Early performing and musical training

She begins singing at a very young age and starts writing songs while still a child, using a Casio keyboard, a karaoke machine, and the demo version of Cakewalk. She performs in a range of settings including musical theatre, jazz venues, coffee shops, and a punk band. After high school, she studies music at several colleges, but leaves formal education to pursue her own career. The orchestral skills she gains there remain part of her writing and arranging.

Recordings

Her first album is Bric-a-Brac: A Collection of Musical Stories, Sentences, and Half-Words, a compilation that moves between finger-picked folk songs, quasi-orchestral instrumentals, and theatrical piano pieces in waltz time. She also works on an all-vocal EP arranged and sung entirely by her, and on a full-length album that she plans to co-produce and fully orchestrate. Her song “My Viking” appears on the compilation CD Goin’ Back Home and receives independent radio play in Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New Orleans.