Mika Taressa Todd aka Mika biography

Mika Todd is a Japanese sugarpop kids' singer turned jazz musician.

Just let that sentence sink in a while.

Mika joined the Hello! Project in 1999 as a member of Coconuts Musume, a horrendously failed gimmick that involved taking random Hawaiian girls who didn't speak Japanese and sticking them in Japan. Well, that's not entirely true. Mika spoke a bit of Japanese, and in time, after three of the five Coconuts couldn't take it and left, Mika got her lucky break in 2000, when it was decided that she was short enough and weird enough to join Minimoni. Much wacky hijinks ensued.

In 2003, Minimoni's founder, Mari Yaguchi, decided that singing about bubble baths wasn't really bringing out her sexy side and left the group to work on other projects. (Though in all fairness, being the leader of a group that consists of several girls all under 16 doesn't really bring your sexy side out either.) Minimoni was left in Mika's hands.

Unfortunately, Mika did not have Yaguchi's inherently insane personality, and the group made an awkward shift into R&B and hip-hop. (See pink bunny gangster picture.) With Minimoni on the decline and no other viable opportunities showing up, Mika got out of H!P in 2004 and set her sights on LA's jazz scene.

She released her first solo album in 2005, to pretty much epic silence. Mika recently revealed that she was working on a cartoon called "Da Jammies," which has been advertised as "coming soon" for a good year now.