Jonathan Meiburg is a multi-instrumentalist musician and the lead singer and songwriter for Shearwater who are signed to Matador Records.

Meiburg has a bachelor's degree in English, with a minor in Religion, from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and received a Thomas J. Watson fellowship to study daily life in remote human communities. After a year spent in such diverse places as the Falkland Island, Tierra del Fuego, the Aboriginal settlement of Kowanyama in Australia, the Chatham Islands of New Zealand, and the Inuit settlement of Kimmirut in Baffin Island, Canada, he enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a master's degree in Geography and wrote a thesis titled "The Biogeography of Striated Caracaras Phalcoboenus australis". He is an avid birder, and his love of birds shows itself in Shearwater's name, and in the titles of several of the band's albums and EPs.

Meiburg has recorded some material as a solo artist, though he tends to only sell these records at Shearwater tour dates. He has also worked occasionally as a backing musician for singer Bill Callahan.