Rachael Yamagata (born September 23, 1977 in Arlington, Virginia) is an American singer-songwriter. She plays piano and has a dark, raspy alto. She is a Yonsei or fourth-generation Japanese American on her father's side and of Italian and German ancestry on her mother's side.

A child of divorced parents, Yamagata divided her time growing up between her Sansei Japanese American father, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney and Harvard graduate; and her Italian-German mother, who was born in China, an artist/painter in New York City. Yamagata graduated from the Holton-Arms School for Girls in Bethesda, Maryland, and attended Northwestern and Vassar.