Miho Hatori (born April 5, 1970) is a Japanese singer, songwriter, musician, producer, and multimedia artist based in New York City. Her work combines elements of alternative pop, hip-hop, electronic music, bossa nova, rock, improvisation, and experimental sound. She is best known as a founding member of Cibo Matto, a collaborator on the first Gorillaz album, and a solo artist whose music often connects sound with questions of identity, language, and cultural movement.
Hatori grew up in Tokyo, where she worked at the record store Flash Disc Ranch in Shimokitazawa and developed an early interest in DJing and hip-hop. In the early 1990s, she performed with the Japanese hip-hop group Kimidori before moving to New York in 1993 to study art. She soon became involved in the city's underground music community, singing and playing violin with the punk and noise group Leitoh Lychee. The band also included Yuka Honda, with whom Hatori would establish her most influential project.
Hatori and Honda formed Cibo Matto in 1994. The band's music combined electronic production, hip-hop rhythms, lounge pop, punk attitude, and surreal songwriting, creating a distinctive sound within the New York alternative scene. Their debut album, Viva! La Woman, appeared in 1996 and brought the group international attention. Cibo Matto followed it with the Super Relax EP in 1997 and the more expansive Stereo Type A in 1999. Hatori contributed vocals, songwriting, production, guitar, and other instruments to the group's recordings. She also participated in the collective Butter 08 and appeared on the Beastie Boys album Hello Nasty, extending her reputation as a versatile collaborator.
Following Cibo Matto's initial breakup, Hatori became associated with Gorillaz. She supplied vocals for the virtual band's self-titled 2001 debut, including material connected with the animated character Noodle. Her voice helped give songs such as "19-2000" and "Re-Hash" some of their most recognizable melodic and textural elements. Rather than treating pop music as a fixed style, Hatori used the Gorillaz project as another setting for her interest in character, performance, and hybrid musical forms.
Hatori also formed Smokey & Miho with guitarist Smokey Hormel. The duo explored Brazilian popular music, particularly the work of Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes, on the Smokey & Miho and Tempo de Amor EPs, later collected as The Two EPs. This work highlighted the softer, more intimate side of Hatori's musicianship while retaining her taste for unusual arrangements and cross-cultural combinations.
Her first solo album, Ecdysis, was released in Japan in 2005 and internationally the following year. The record moved away from Cibo Matto's group dynamic toward a more personal mixture of electronic pop, atmospheric production, playful rhythms, and layered vocals. Later projects expanded further into experimental sound and multimedia performance. Under the name Miss Information, Hatori created the album Sequence in 2018, while Between Isekai and Slice of Life followed in 2021. She has also worked under the name New Optimism and created music videos, installations, performance pieces, film music, and commercial sound projects.
Across her career, Hatori has resisted a single genre or fixed artistic identity. Her importance lies in the way she moves between underground music, pop collaboration, improvisation, visual art, and conceptual performance while maintaining a recognizable sense of curiosity and play.