Feist

Best BREAKTHROUGH ACT in NATIONAL

Leslie Feist has come a long way since she first arrived in Toronto from Calgary, moved in with electroclash vixen Peaches, and found herself singing and touring behind The Teaches of Peaches as “Bitch Lap-Top.” But then Feist has been fortunate enough to find herself in the right place at the right time on more than one occasion. First the guitarist, who’d been told she’d never sing again after ravaging her voice in a punk band as a kid, hooked up with Broken Social Scene just as the indie collective were hitting their stride with their sophomore disc, 2002’s You Forgot It in People, the album that won them a Juno award and drew international attention to the scene emerging around their Arts and Craft label. This gave her the perfect platform from which to reemerge as a sultry singer-songwriter with an alluring delivery and a taste for electro-organic folk-pop with a bit of a jazzy edge. Last year she was smart enough to license the charmingly simple “1234” to an iPod ad campaign that got it — and her — as much exposure as a Top 40 radio hit, if not more. She’d already graduated to the majors with The Reminder (Interscope) by then, and she’s since demonstrated the right mix of mainstream playfulness and sophistication without alienating the indie kids who first discovered her.

— Matt Ashare

Runners-up
1. Paramore
2. Spoon
3. Band of Horses