[2] Krauss has released 14 albums, appeared on numerous soundtracks, and sparked a renewed interest in bluegrass music in the United States.

Fred Krauss was a German immigrant who came to the United States in 1952 at age 12, and taught his native language while he earned a doctorate in psychology.

[15] Krauss's mother played banjo and acoustic guitar,[13] so Krauss was exposed to folk music at home, and she heard rock and pop music on the radio: She liked Gary Numan's synth-pop song "Cars", and rock bands such as Foreigner, Bad Company, and Electric Light Orchestra.

[16] Her brother Viktor played piano and double bass in high school, launching a career as a jazz and rock multi-instrumentalist.

Krauss learned by ear to play several songs from the album, including "Tennessee Waltz", which she practiced on violin with her mother accompanying on guitar.

[23]) Krauss investigated the bluegrass genre more thoroughly after this, and she developed a knack for learning complex riffs by ear, quickly turning them into her own version.

[19] At 13, she won the Walnut Valley Festival Fiddle Championship,[24] and the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass in America named her the "Most Promising Fiddler in the Midwest".

From the age of 12 she performed with bassist and songwriter John Pennell in a band called "Silver Rail", replacing Andrea Zonn.

[29] Later that year, she signed to Rounder Records, and in 1987, at 16, she released her debut album Too Late to Cry with Union Station as her backup band.

[31] The album includes the traditional tunes "Wild Bill Jones" and "Beaumont Rag", along with a bluegrass interpretation of the Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider".

Some of these covers include Bad Company's "Oh Atlanta", the Foundations' & Dan Schafer's "Baby, Now That I've Found You", which was used in the Australian hit comedy movie The Castle, and the Beatles' "I Will" with Tony Furtado.

In 2014, Krauss and her band Union Station toured with Willie Nelson and Family, with special guests Kacey Musgraves, and the Devil Makes Three.

She and Dan Tyminski contributed multiple tracks, including "I'll Fly Away" (with Gillian Welch), "Down to the River to Pray", and "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow".

[63] In 2007, Krauss released A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection, an album of new songs, soundtrack tunes, and duets with artists such as John Waite, James Taylor, Brad Paisley, and Natalie MacMaster.

On August 11, television network Great American Country aired a one-hour special, Alison Krauss: A Hundred Miles or More, based on the album.

[66] Krauss appeared on Heart's March 2010 concert DVD Night at Sky Church, providing the lead vocals for the song "These Dreams".

[67] Other soundtracks for which Krauss has performed include Twister, The Prince of Egypt, Eight Crazy Nights, Mona Lisa Smile, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Alias, Bambi II and Cold Mountain.

The Cold Mountain songs she sang, "The Scarlet Tide" with T Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello, and "You Will Be My Ain True Love" with Sting, were each nominated for an Academy Award.

[70][71] Krauss also appears on Def Leppard's twelfth studio album, Diamond Star Halos, released March 2022, as a featured vocalist on the songs "This Guitar" and "Lifeless".

[74][75][76] Krauss' family listened to "folk records" while she was growing up, but she had friends who exposed her to such acts as AC/DC, Carly Simon, the Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and ELO.

[79] While they have been successful as a group, many reviews note Krauss still "remains the undisputed star and rock-solid foundation" and have described her as the "band's focus"[80] with an "angelic"[79] voice that "flows like honey".

[80] Her work has been compared to that of the Cox Family, Bill Monroe, and Del McCoury,[citation needed] and has in turn been credited with influencing various "Newgrass" artists including Nickel Creek, for which she acted as record producer on two of their albums.

[82] Adam Sweeting of The Guardian has said Krauss and Union Station are "superb, when they stick to hoedowns and hillbilly music, but much less convincing, when they lurch towards the middle of the road".

[63][89] She most commonly performs in the bluegrass and country genres, though she has had two songs on the adult contemporary charts, has worked with rock artists such as Phish[31] and Sting,[68] and is sometimes said to stray into pop music.

The director for a video to "If I Didn't Know Any Better" from Lonely Runs Both Ways, for example, was selected because Krauss enjoyed work he had done with Def Leppard and, she wondered, what he could do with their music.

While style decisions are generally left to the various directors of the videos, many – including for "The Lucky One", "Restless", "Goodbye is All We Have", "New Favorite", and "If I Didn't Know Any Better" – follow a pattern.

[104][105] Krauss has won twenty-seven Grammy Awards[106] over the course of her career as a solo artist, as a group with Union Station, as a duet with Robert Plant, and as a record producer.

[118] At the 76th Academy Awards in February 2004, where she performed two nominated songs from the Cold Mountain soundtrack, Krauss was chosen by Hollywood shoe designer Stuart Weitzman to wear a pair of $2 million 'Cinderella' sandals with 4½ inch clear glass stiletto heels and two straps adorned with 565 Kwiat diamonds set in platinum.

In addition to the fairy-tale-inspired shoes, Weitzman outfitted Krauss with a Palm Trēo 600 smartphone, bejeweled with 3,000 clear-and-topaz-colored Swarovski crystals.

[121] In March 2015, her hometown of Champaign, Illinois, designated the 400 block of West Hill Street as "Honorary Alison Krauss Way".