Ingrid Michaelson is an American indie-pop singer-songwriter who built one of music's most successful independent careers, selling more than a million albums without the backing of a major label. Born December 8, 1979, in New York City and raised on Staten Island by a composer father and sculptor mother, she studied theater before turning to songwriting and self-releasing her earliest music in the mid-2000s.

Her breakthrough came in 2007 when "The Way I Am," from her album Girls and Boys (2006), was featured in a national Old Navy commercial and became a surprise hit, propelling the independently released record up the charts. The song's success established Michaelson as a pioneer of the TV-and-sync-licensing path to stardom, with her music appearing across hit series including Grey's Anatomy.