PJ Harvey crafts a singular sound that shape-shifts across alternative rock, indie, and art rock, her raw guitar fury and keening vocals evolving into neo-folk introspection on her tenth album, I Inside the Old Year Dying. Born in England's Dorset, she channels Patti Smith’s ferocity, Captain Beefheart’s melodic shards, and Beethoven’s late-period mystery into lyrics laced with dialect and vivid, fragmented imagery—from drisk-swept meadows to femboys in the forest.

A restless innovator like Bowie, Harvey has collaborated closely with John Parish and producer Flood, while peers like Thom Yorke echo her experimental edge. Her fieldwork-fueled war elegies in Let England Shake gave way to personal, eldritch verse drawn from her novel Orlam, blending medieval hush with futuristic loops. Distinctive for her bruised-shin delivery and genre-defying pivots, she remains a prophetic force, influencing a new guard from Wolf Alice to Florence + the Machine.