Jewel Kilcher (born Juel Kilcher on May 23, 1974), best known mononymously as Jewel, is an American singer-songwriter. She has been nominated for four Grammy Awards and has sold over 30 million albums worldwide as of 2024.

Jewel was raised near Homer, Alaska, where she grew up singing and yodeling as a musical duo with her father, Atz Kilcher, a local musician. At age fifteen, she received a partial scholarship to the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, where she studied operatic voice. After graduating, she began writing and performing at clubs and coffeehouses in San Diego, California. Based on local media attention, she was signed by Atlantic Records in 1993, which released her debut album Pieces of You two years later. One of the best-selling debut albums of all time, it went 12-times platinum. The debut single from the album, "Who Will Save Your Soul", peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. Singles "You Were Meant for Me" and "Foolish Games" reached number two on the Hot 100, and were listed on Billboard's 1997 year-end singles chart, as well as Billboard's 1998 year-end singles chart.

Jewel's second effort, Spirit, was released in 1998, followed by This Way (2001). In 2003, she released 0304, which marked a departure from her previous folk-oriented records, featuring electronic arrangements and elements of dance-pop. In 2008, she released Perfectly Clear, her first country album, which debuted atop Billboard's Top Country Albums chart and featured three singles, "Stronger Woman", "I Do", and "'Til It Feels Like Cheating". In 2009, Jewel released her first independent album, Lullaby.

In 1998, Jewel released a collection of poetry, and in the following year, she appeared in a supporting role in Ang Lee's Western film Ride with the Devil (1999) which earned her critical acclaim. In 2021, she won the sixth season of The Masked Singer as the Queen of Hearts.

Jewel Kilcher was born May 23, 1974, in Payson, Utah, the second child of Atz Kilcher and Nedra Kilcher (née Carroll). At the time of her birth, her parents had been living in Utah with her elder brother, Shane; her father was attending Brigham Young University. She is a cousin of actress Q'orianka Kilcher. Her father, originally from Alaska, was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though the family stopped attending church after her parents' divorce when she was eight years old. Her paternal grandfather, Yule Kilcher, was a delegate to the Alaska constitutional convention and a state senator who settled in Alaska after emigrating from Switzerland. He was also the first recorded person to cross the Harding Icefield.

Shortly after Jewel's birth, her family relocated to Anchorage, Alaska, settling on the Kilcher family's 770-acre (310 ha) homestead. There, her younger brother Atz Jr. was born. She also has a half-brother, Nikos, who was primarily raised in Oregon by his mother, with whom her father had a brief relationship; Jewel would later become close to him in adulthood. After her parents' divorce in 1981, Jewel lived with her father near Homer, Alaska. The house she grew up in lacked indoor plumbing and had only a simple outhouse. The Kilcher family is featured on the Discovery Channel show Alaska: The Last Frontier, which chronicles their day-to-day struggles living in the Alaskan wilderness. Recalling her upbringing, she said:

"We lived far from town. We had to walk 2 miles (3.2 km) just to get to the saddle barn I was raised in... No running water, no heat—we had a coal stove and an outhouse and we mainly lived off of what we could kill or can. We picked berries and made jam. We caught fish to freeze and had gardens and cattle to live on. I rode horses every day in the summer beneath the Alaskan midnight sun. I loved it there."

According to Jewel, the first song she learned to sing was "Saint Louis Blues". In her youth, Jewel and her father sometimes earned a living by performing music in roadhouses and taverns as a father-daughter musical duo; they also often sang at hotels in Anchorage, including the Hotel Captain Cook and the Hilton Anchorage. It was during this time that Jewel learned to yodel from her father. She would later credit the time she spent in bars as integral to her formative years: "I saw women who would compromise themselves for compliments, for flattery; or men who would run away from themselves by drinking until they ultimately killed themselves."