Rainer Maria is a three piece emo band from Madison, Wisconsin, later residing in Brooklyn, New York, originally active from 1995 to 2006. Named after the German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Caithlin De Marrais, Kaia Fischer and William Kuehn formed the band in late summer of 1995. They released five full-length albums, a live DVD, numerous live recordings, and EPs. In its earlier days, the band had a dual male and female vocal line-up; later, De Marrais would become the lead vocalist in a majority of their songs. The gender ambiguity of the name Rainer Maria paralleled this and was one of the reasons it was selected as the band's name