Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), and Mike McCready (lead guitar). The band's current drummer is Matt Cameron, formerly of Soundgarden, who has been with the band since 1998.

Formed after the demise of Ament and Gossard's previous band Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with its debut album, Ten. One of the key bands of the grunge movement in the early 1990s, Pearl Jam was criticized early on—most notably by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain—as being a corporate cash-in on the alternative rock explosion. However, over the course of the band's career its members became noted for their refusal to adhere to traditional music industry practices, including refusing to make music videos and engaging in a much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster. In 2006, Rolling Stone described the band as having "spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their own fame."

Since its inception, the band has sold thirty million records in the U.S., and an estimated sixty million albums worldwide. Pearl Jam has outlasted many of its contemporaries from the alternative rock breakthrough of the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most influential bands of the decade. Allmusic calls Pearl Jam "the most popular American rock & roll band of the '90s."

Pearl Jams debut album Ten, which was recorded in March 1991 and released in August 1991, contained eleven tracks mainly dealing with depression, murder and loneliness. The album sold slow, but by the second half of 1992 it became a breakthrough success. With the success of Ten, Pearl Jam became a key member of the Seattle grunge explosion, along with Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden. With the beginning of its success, the band had to face problems as it was criticized in the music press and by other musicians. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain claimed the band were commercial sellouts and argued Ten was not a true alternative album because it had so many prominent guitar leads. However, Cobain and Vedder became friends before Cobain's death in 1994.

Since the release of their debut album in 1991 additional 7 albums have been released:

Vs. (1993)
Vitalogy (1994)
No Code (1996)
Yield (1998)
Binaural (2000)
Riot Act (2002)
Pearl Jam (2004)