King Woman

King Woman is an American doom metal band from San Francisco, California, led by the singer and guitarist Kristina Esfandiari. Esfandiari, born on 4 March 1988, was born to immigrant parents, an Iranian father and a Serbian mother, and her Serbian mother is why the band is on Muzika-Balkan under Serbia. She grew up in Sacramento, California, and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area at 22. The band is from San Francisco, and for a time it had two bases after she moved to Brooklyn, New York.

Esfandiari began King Woman as a solo project in 2009, while she was also singing in other bands, among them the shoegaze band Whirr. The first release did not come until 2013, the single "Degrida / Sick Bed". Her lyrics largely deal with her childhood in a cult-like charismatic Christian community in Northern California, and she chose the heavy, slow sound of doom metal to carry them.

King Woman grew into a full band with guitarist Colin Gallagher, bassist Peter Arensdorf and drummer Joey Raygoza, Esfandiari's childhood friend. That line-up released the EP Doubt in 2015 on The Flenser, songs about trying to leave her religious upbringing, and played regularly around the Bay Area. In 2016 the band signed to Relapse Records.

The first album, Created in the Image of Suffering, came out in 2017 and mixed doom metal with shoegaze and sludge. Pitchfork named it one of the best rock albums of the year, and several critics put it among the best metal albums of 2017. Gallagher then left, and Arensdorf played both bass and lead guitar on Celestial Blues, released by Relapse in July 2021 after the singles "Morning Star", "Psychic Wound" and "Boghz". It brought in grunge and post-rock, and its lyrics were more hopeful, about rising above childhood trauma.

Esfandiari also records as Miserable (shoegaze), Dalmatian (rap), NGHTCRWLR (drone and noise) and in the duo Sugar High. King Woman has released less since, but the stand-alone single "Bury" came out in 2024. The playlist is the album Celestial Blues.