Her music is noted for its moody quality and confessional lyrical style, as well as frank explorations of topics including Christianity, addiction, mental illness, and human nature.

She has spoken of being inspired by her father who, after an accident in his twenties resulting in the amputation of his leg, dedicated his life to making experimental prosthetic limbs.

[4][8] After seeing Green Day on television, she was inspired to explore more alternative music and started listening to bands like My Chemical Romance and Death Cab for Cutie.

[6][9] She subsequently became captivated by the punk, hardcore, metalcore, and screamo scenes, and has said some of her favorite bands were mewithoutYou, Underoath, The Chariot, Norma Jean, and Whitechapel.

[6][9] She struggled with substance abuse as a young teen, but found support in the community surrounding house shows in Memphis, and became inspired by the straight edge punk subculture.

[11][12][13] Baker attended Arlington High School and then Middle Tennessee State University, where she had a campus job in the A/V department and initially studied audio engineering, before switching to literature and secondary education.

[5][14][15][16] She eventually left school to tour full-time after the release of Sprained Ankle, but returned to campus in the fall of 2019 to complete her degree in literature.

[17] During her first year at MTSU, Baker began writing songs on her own, often utilizing the university practice rooms that stayed open late at night.

[13] Sprained Ankle ended up topping many 2015 year-end lists, and its success led to features in The New Yorker and The New York Times, with various critics calling it "heartbreaking," "hypnotic," and "striking.

She spent the following year touring across the U.S. and internationally, performing alongside artists including The National, Father John Misty, Half Waif, Adam Torres, and Lucy Dacus, and appearing on CBS This Morning and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

[30][31][32] Baker has opened for or collaborated with a wide range of artists, including Death Cab for Cutie, Conor Oberst, Paramore and Hayley Williams, The National, The Decemberists, Belle & Sebastian, Frightened Rabbit, The Front Bottoms, Touche Amore, Manchester Orchestra, and Bright Eyes.

[33][34] In 2018, Baker formed the rock supergroup Boygenius with fellow indie singer-songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, both of whom she had toured with previously.

[36] The trio has continued to collaborate on each other's solo work since the release of their EP, lending backing vocals to two songs from Bridgers' Grammy-nominated Punisher (2020), "Please Stay" from Dacus' Home Video (2021), and "Favor" from Baker's Little Oblivions (2021), as well as Hayley Williams' Petals for Armor (2020) single "Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris.

[40] On October 21, 2020, Baker announced her third studio album, Little Oblivions, accompanied by the lead single "Faith Healer" and an essay by poet Hanif Abdurraqib.

"[37] It was written mostly over the course of 2019, a difficult and formative year for Baker as she had to cancel various tour dates, struggled with her sobriety and mental health, and eventually returned to school to finish her degree at MTSU.

[62] The sparse arrangements on her "fragile, gentle" 2015 debut, Sprained Ankle, feature only her voice, guitar, and occasional piano, and her stage performances for many years consisted of her alone, utilizing a loop pedal.

"[66][67] "Baker's gentle touch [...] evok[es] an entire world — of suffering and healing, eagerness and fear, loneliness and companionship, distance and intimacy — in its search for a more human truth."

To hear someone wrestling with and still thankful for the circumstances of a life that might reveal some brilliance if any of us just stick around long enough.Baker is a lesbian, and her fraught experiences with organized Christianity inform much of her work.

[76][77][78][17] She has since discussed the ever-changing nature of her relationship to faith, saying she is no longer interested in labeling her beliefs so rigidly and that she is trying to adopt a less dichotomous worldview than the one she was raised with, calling the realization "freeing.