Aimee Mann has been around for a while (she turned 50 last month when I meant to post this), she's been in two bands, Young Snakes and 'Til Tuesday, and it was with the latter that she achieved some early success with a song called "Voices Carry" that got MTV rotation and became a hit. The band broke up in 1990 but it was three years before she released "Whatever" as a solo debut, then in '95 she released "I'm with Stupid" both produced by Jon Brion, who was part of 'Til Tuesday towards the end. She married Michael Penn, brother of Sean and Chris, and it was he along with Jon Brion who introduced her to Paul Thomas Anderson. She had recorded album number 3, "Bachelor No.2" but the record company didn't like it, however Anderson went off and wrote Magnolia using her songs as inspiration, even borrowing lyrics as dialogue some times. She went on to record some more songs for the soundtrack, including "Save Me" with the video featuring all the characters from the movie, here it is live from the "Live at St.Ann's Warehouse" DVD.
After the success of the soundtrack, she managed to release Bachelor.No2 on her own label, Super Ego Records. She followed this with "Lost In Space" in 2002, then in 2005 with "The Forgotten Arm", a concept album that dealt with a couple on the run and also boxing, which she took up, a Christmas album "One More Drifter in the Snow" towards the end of 2006 and 2008's "@#%&*! Smilers".
She was also the nihilist who loses a toe in The Big Lebowski, and appeared as herself in TV's Buffy The Vampire Slayer (playing Pavlov's Bell) and The West Wing.