Vocalist, keyboardist, composer, and educator Alison Faith Levy has enjoyed a career making smart, engaging pop music for listeners of all ages. She's written and recorded imaginative and evocative indie music as a solo artist and in collaboration with artists such as Scott Miller and Victor Krummenacher, but she's also won acclaim for her music written for kids and their families, as a member of the "kindie" group the Sippy Cups and later with her own Big Time Tot Rock band. All of her music features her artful keyboard work, her melodies that meld straightforward tunefulness and undertows of indie rock and psychedelia, and her graceful and soulful vocals. Levy made her solo debut with the atmospheric, piano-based 1998 release The Fog Show, she demonstrated her ability to make smart, passionate pop music that's still kid friendly on 2012's World of Wonder, and offered a positive message with earthly and spiritual aspects with 2021's You Are Magic.

Alison Faith Levy was born in New York City and studied philosophy at New York University, but her musical career didn't get off the ground until she moved to San Francisco in the 1990s. In 1995, she released a vinyl single, "The Scientist" b/w "Execution Day," and that same year she contributed backing vocals for Out in the Heat, an album by Victor Krummenacher's Great Laugh, a solo project from the Camper van Beethoven bassist. Levy would continue to collaborate with Krummenacher in the years to come; she contributed to several of his albums, and they performed as a duo under the banner McCabe Mrs. Miller, who in 2009 released the album Time for Leaving. She also lent backing vocals to John Wesley Harding's 1998 album Awake, and that same year, she joined the Loud Family, the celebrated pop band led by Scott Miller, who earlier fronted the group Game Theory. Levy appeared on 1998's Days for Days, contributed to the songwriting and sang two lead vocals on 2000's Attractive Nuisance, is featured on 2002's post-breakup live album From Ritual to Romance, and returned for the 2006 reunion effort with Anton Barbeau What If It Works?

Around the same time she joined the Loud Family, Levy released her first solo album, 1998's The Fog Show, a spare but powerful effort whose pieces were built around her piano work. Her second LP, 2000's My World View, was a more diverse effort that embraced a variety of pop influences, and 2002's Stars Fell was a collaboration with guitarist Dale Miller in which she sang a program of blues and pop standards.

The birth of Alison's son inspired her to make music for children, and with that in mind, she joined the band the Sippy Cups, a San Francisco group who played family-friendly, psychedelic-influenced pop music with plenty of room for participation from their younger fans. Levy would cut three albums with the Sippy Cups -- 2005's Kids Rock for Peas, 2006's Electric Storyland, and 2009's The Time Machine -- and the group would become a popular live attraction, touring the country and earning praise from children and grown-ups alike. (During her downtime from the Sippy Cups, Levy appeared on two albums with the Bay Area art rock band Mushroom, 2004's Glazed Popems and 2007's Yesterday I Saw You Kissing Tiny Flowers.)

After the Sippy Cups went on hiatus, Levy began crafting kid-friendly music on her own, releasing the tuneful album World of Wonder in 2012, with The Start of Things following in 2015. She assembled a new band, Big Time Tot Rock, for live appearances and became one of the most respected artists in children's music, especially on the West Coast. Levy long had an interest in education, and after completing her initial studies in Jewish education, she went on to receive a master's degree at Boston's Hebrew College. She serves as a family education coordinator at Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo, California, and is a Cantorial Soloist with San Francisco's Or Shalom Jewish Community. Levy's spiritual journey informed her 2021 album You Are Magic, a collection of songs designed to inspire dialogue between children and adults about how and where we gain our values and how we can use them to make a better world. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi