Cao Fang is a Chinese indie pop singer-songwriter and melodica player. She sings in Mandarin. Her music style has drawn comparisons to The Cranberries and Faye Wong. Some of her songs show the influence of trip hop, bossa nova, and the music of China's ethnic minorities, such as the Jino people, whom she visited in Xishuangbanna as a child.
In 1996 she went to Kunming to study. In high school, she began writing songs and joined a band. The band recorded a demo, which impressed the musician Xiao Ke, who heard it in approximately 2001 while recording traditional music in Yunnan, but was unable to locate her. Several months later, she came to Beijing for a university students' original music competition, for which Xiao Ke was a judge; she won the awards for best lyrics and best group, and Xiao Ke invited her to join the label he had founded.
Cao moved to Beijing in 2002, where she began working as an assistant at Xiao Ke's label. Soon thereafter she signed to the label. She released her first CD, Black Perfume, in 2003. The album was poorly promoted and sold poorly, but she gradually achieved renown via discussion of her works on Chinese blogs.