Kay Hanley
Kay Hanley is an executive producer and songwriter for “Kindergarten: The Musical,” an animated musical series that follows 5-year-old Berti and her new friends as they navigate the experiences that come with starting school for the first time.
An Emmy® and Peabody Award-winning songwriter and composer, Hanley began her career in music as the lead singer of Boston-based alternative rock band Letters to Cleo, releasing three acclaimed albums between 1990-2000, spawning such hits as “Awake” and “Here and Now.”
In the late ‘90s, Hanley began expanding her work as a singer and songwriter into the TV and film world, providing the singing voice for Rachael Leigh Cook’s character Josie in Universal Pictures’ feature film “Josie and the Pussycats” and performing cover versions of Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to be Kind” and Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me” in Touchstone Pictures’ hit film “10 Things I Hate About You.”
In 2002, Hanley released her first full-length solo album, “Cherry Marmalade.” The record has recently been remastered for a double album 20th-anniversary vinyl rerelease. Subsequent solo releases were “The Babydoll EP” (2005) and “Weaponize” (2009). After a 16-year hiatus, Letters To Cleo reunited in 2016 to release new music and embark on several sold-out U.S. tours.
Together with her writing partners, Michelle Lewis and Dan Petty, Hanley wrote all of the original music, including the theme song, for the Peabody Award-winning Disney Jr. series “Doc McStuffins.”
Her additional songwriting television credits include “Vampirina,” “Harvey Street Kids,” “DC Super Hero Girls: Sweet Justice” and “Ada Twist, Scientist.” In 2021, she and her writing partners teamed up again with “Doc McStuffins” creator Chris Nee on the Emmy Award-winning musical anthology series “We the People.” In 2023, she cowrote all original songs for “Subspace Rhapsody,” the first-ever musical episode for the hit series “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” with Letters to Cleo bandmate Tom Polce.
Hanley is cofounder of Songwriters of North America (SONA), a nonprofit advocacy organization that fights for the protection and value of songs and songwriters in the streaming music marketplace. As a result of that work, Hanley was elected to represent songwriters at the Mechanical Licensing Collective, serving as vice chair of the Unclaimed Royalties Oversight Committee since 2019.
Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Hanley currently resides in Los Angeles and is a proud mom to former kindergarteners Zoe Mabel and Henry Aaron.