One of five children in a fifth generation Mormon couple, Hoop was steeped in a musical environment created by her family. She began performing as a child and starred in her high school choir.

Hoop broke away from the strictures of Mormonism just as her parents were separating. During this time, her mother Janette turned the basement into a theatre, and brought in all sorts of eccentrics to rehearse and put on musical plays for the community.

Jesca started to rebel against the traditions of her family and the only life she had known. "My girlfriend and I started smoking pot, which was such an out there thing for me to do given my upbringing. I was singing with the Santa Rosa Chamber Choir at that time. The combination of singing in that style for hours a day and smoking thrashed my voice....until it was gone. I had to leave the choir, and it took me about a year to regain my vocal strength. I had to re-teach myself how to sing in the ways that worked for me.... Cut a new pattern and stitch myself back together. It was a blessing. It is why I sing the way I do. Appropriately, at that time I started listening to Kate Bush, Tom Waits, Björk and Diamanda Galas."

Hoop spent the next several years homesteading in Northern California, Wyoming and in the high mountains of Arizona, where she worked in a wilderness rehabilitation program for mixed up kids.

Later deciding to move back to California, Hoop formed a duo with a friend and started playing in Northern California clubs before going to work for the Waits family.

As a nanny for Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's three children, Hoop gained musical experience. Waits says, "Her music is like going swimming in a lake at night." The Los Angeles Times considered Hoop one of ten Southern California artists that are "new and notable in 2007."

Her contact with Tom Waits led to her initial exposure through Nic Harcourt at the Southern California radio station KCRW in 2003. Since then, Hoop has shared the stage with many acts. In 2007 she toured with Polyphonic Spree and Matt Pond PA. In 2008 she toured with Elbow and Mark Knopfler, and then in 2009 toured with Greg Laswell, Elbow and Andrew Bird. Jesca headlined a tour of the UK and Ireland in February 2010, and France in March 2010. She is also headline on her own tour of the UK in summer 2010, which started in Leeds May 1.

Hoop announced in September 2008 that she would be releasing an album titled, Kismet Acoustic, in October 2008, featuring one new song and four acoustic versions of tracks from her debut CD, Kismet.

In July 2009, Hoop announced that she had finished recording her second album, entitled Hunting My Dress. In September she posted the opening track to the record online and on November 30, 2009 the record became available in the UK and Ireland, with a US release date expected for mid 2010.

Jesca Ada Hoop is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist from Northern California, who performs music that covers differing genres. Her musical mentor has been Tom Waits.