Miho Hatori

Miho Hatori (羽鳥美保 Hatori Miho b. April 5; Kawasaki, Japan) is a singer and songwriter, primarily known as the vocalist of the New York City outfit, Cibo Matto. She also provided the female vocals for the first Gorillaz album. Miho expressed an early interest in music while growing up in Japan. She worked in a record shop where she was exposed to many different styles of music, and sometimes performed as a club DJ. She also had some minor success in Tokyo rapping in a band named Kimidori. Miho moved to the United States, New York sometime around 1993 to study at an English school; She also continued her infrequent work as a DJ. The first New York band she was in was a Punk band named Leitoh Lychee for which she provided the vocals, and also played violin through a distortion effects pedal. It was in Leitoh Lychee where she first met her Cibo Matto co-founder Yuka Honda in 1994. While Cibo Matto was touring with Beck, Miho and Beck guitarist Smokey Hormel discovered a shared love of bossa nova and samba, which eventually resulted in their Brazilian-styled musical project Smokey & Miho. Other bands she has worked with include - but are not limited to - Handsome Boy Modeling School, Stephin Merritt's The 6ths, Beastie Boys, John Zorn, as well as performing on her own. On October 21, 2005 her first solo album, Ecdysis, was released in Japan. In 2007, she wrote and produced the soundtrack to the Japanese film "Shindo".