K.Flay (born Kristine Meredith Flaherty, June 30, 1985, Wilmette, Illinois, United States) is an American alternative artist, and an alumna of Stanford University in California, where she graduated with degrees in psychology and sociology. An outspoken advocate for higher education, Flaherty encourages students to complete their degree, citing the “supportive community” that school provides.

In 2014, she began to get major recognition following the release of her first full-length album Life As A Dog. She tours extensively and has performed alongside Snoop Dogg, Passion Pit, as well as on the Vans Warped Tour 2014. She thought of Warped Tour as a great learning experience and “was almost like an exercise in becoming a better performer,”. She has also recorded two sessions with Chicago-based music company Audiotree, best known for their in-studio live sessions. The first of these sessions was recorded and released in 2013, and the second was released in August 2015.

Flaherty herself describes her sound as “genre-defying,” and draws from lo-fi pop and hip hop influences with a strong indie component. This lack of genre lends itself well to touring and collaborating with diverse artists, but also led her to conflict within a major label.

K.Flay successfully stumbled into the rap game by looking to artists such as M.I.A. and Missy Elliott for inspiration, and by having, as she calls it, “an almost existential level of humor about everything.” This self-diagnosed lack of self-consciousness is a major contributor to the ultimate success that K.Flay has seen over the past decade.