Back in 2007, Foo Fighters were joined onstage by a then-little-known guitarist called Kaki King. After introducing the musician as one of the “best guitar players in the whole world,” frontman Dave Grohl left her with an attentive audience. “There are some guitar players that are good and there are some guitar players that are really fucking good,” he said before walking offstage. “And then there’s Kaki King.”

Those of you familiar with Kaki King will know her as the youngest of the new millennium’s Guitar Gods. Combining a percussive approach with artful melodies, she rose to fame in the early years of the 2000s, gaining widespread critical acclaim for her melding of traditional flamenco-style guitar with elements of rock, folk and jazz. She’s also provided scores for television and film, working alongside Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Michel Brook for the Into The Wild soundtrack.

Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, King was surrounded by guitars from an early age, her father being something of a collector. At the age of four, she was encouraged to take up an instrument. No prizes for guessing which one she picked. Sadly, she found formal guitar lessons tedious and quickly moved on to playing drums. Then along came the grunge era, and suddenly, all of her sixth-grade classmates were talking about wanting to play the guitar. “I already knew way more than the boys did,” she told Guitar Player, recalling feeling torn between the guitar and percussion.

As a student in New York, King continued playing both instruments, performing as a drummer in a multitude of Greenwich Village bands while also playing solo guitar in local cafes. She graduated just days before 9/11 and, without a stable income, started busking around New York to earn enough money to eat. “It’s a workout in every way—mentally, physically,” she said of busking on the subway. “To play for two hours in an ugly environment is very challenging. But soon people were coming up to me and saying, ‘Do you have a record?’ And I realised that if I could sell a CD for 10 bucks every time someone asks me for one, I could actually do all right for myself.”

Public interest convinced King to record a set of demos, which she put together while working as a waitress at the Mercury Lounge, a spot known for hosting music industry bigwigs. After watching countless artists have their shot at stardom, she managed to secure some stage time, and by 2002 she had the Lounge hosting a release party for her subway demos. The collection was subsequently picked up by the team at The Knitting Factory nightclub, who offered King a weekly residency at their bar. It was during one of her weekly sets that Velour Records A&R man Jeff Krasno walked in and signed King on the spot. Her debut album, Everybody Loves You, came out in 2003.

Over the next few years, she continued to develop her sound, taking influence from the Swannanoa Gatherings in North Carolina and the percussive playing of fingerstyle guitairst Preston Reed, who just so happened to play the same guitar – an Ovation Adamas. Since then, King’s sound has transformed countless times over, but that original hunger to explore the possibilities of her instrument has never faded.