It is owned and operated by Lotus Communications and it airs a gold-based country music radio format.

KVI-FM's first program director was Frank Colbourn, who relocated to Seattle from Monterey, California, to sign-on the new format.

Colbourn earned the station twelve gold records from artists such as Stevie Wonder, Exile, and Donna Summer.

The death of disco, combined with the 1981, sign-on of Top-40 upstart KBLE-FM, which later became KUBE, signaled a tough ratings environment for KPLZ in the early 1980s.

However, under the leadership of Program Director Jeff King, and later Casey Keating, the station was in a close race in the ratings with KUBE for Top 40 supremacy during the 1980s.

[6] On January 14, 1994, at noon, KPLZ finally gave up on Top 40 and flipped to hot adult contemporary as "Star 101.5".

[7][8] Kent Phillips and Alan Budwill, who had hosted mornings on the station since 1986, remained after the flip to "Star" and continued until December 2018, when Budwill retired and Phillips moved to afternoons; mornings would then be hosted by Curt Kruse and Corine McKenzie and producer Leonard Barokas until they were let go from the station in March 2021.

[9][10][11][12][13][14] On April 11, 2013, Fisher Communications announced that it would sell its properties, including KPLZ-FM, to the Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Although Sinclair primarily owns television stations, the company said it would retain KPLZ, talk radio KVI, all-news radio KOMO and continued to lease KOMO-FM as a simulcast of KOMO (AM) (KOMO-FM would be purchased outright by Sinclair in June 2020).

[19] On April 1, 2024, Lotus announced that KPLZ would drop the hot AC format after 30 years at 2 pm that day.

However, at midnight on December 26, KPLZ returned to its hot AC format and the "Star" branding, but adjusted its playlist to include some additional gold/recurrent songs from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.