Born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles to a musical family, her father is American actor and singer Morgan Englund, her grandfather was the director-producer George Englund and her grandmother, Academy Award-winning actress Cloris Leachman. Her great-grandmother Mabel Albertson and Mabel's famous brother, Jack Albertson, were also actors and came from a Jewish family. Leachman inspired her granddaughter to become a singer. "My grandmother would make me sing in front of her actor friends but I'd be so shy, I'd have to face away," she recalls. Englund regularly cites her major influence as being Madonna.
Career
She made her first foray as a performer at the Christian youth group she attended aged 16, and became a singer-songwriter at Disney-owned US TV networkABC Family supplying theme songs and other material for television shows. During 2010 and 2011, she wrote and performed largely piano-driven ballads both on her own and as part of a duo named Suburban Nightlife. In late 2012, she met producers Lee Foss and Jamie Jones, and, together with Mark Kinchen, she collaborated on the song "Electricity," released through Hot Creations. The house track was lauded in the electronic music community and added to rotation on BBC Radio 1's Essential Mix playlist in January 2013. The success of the track raised Englund's profile and she took part in the sessions that would become the 2013 album Different Sides of the Sun by British-American electronic/house group Hot Natured. She featured on three tracks: "Reverse Skydiving," "Mercury Rising" and "Emerald City." Remixes of these songs also highlighted Englund's contribution, while "Reverse Skydiving" reached number fifty-six on the Official UK Singles Chart. Englund then performed with Hot Natured at major music festivalsaround the world and also collaborated with Kinchen and Foss to form the Pleasure State project. Their debut EPGhost In the System was released by Hot Creations on December 1, 2014. Earlier that year, Englund revealed she had signed a record deal with Three Six Zero, in partnership with Warner Bros. and Warner/Chappell Music, and was working on her debut solo album. She also signed a modeling contract with Britain's leading agency Models 1. In October 2016, Defected Records announced they would be releasing Englund's debut solo single, "London Headache," on November 14, 2016, described as a "piece of alternative pop/house, with elements of disco running throughout coupled with her deeply personal lyrics". Englund also begun her own event that same year titled Gari Safari, consisting in a series of live shows. She has since been featured in numerous other tracks by various DJs and performing around the world.
