canadian music lovers i need your help

[coalminecanary]

i am looking for new canadian music to get into. i know most of the popular artists from the 90s to today, including various indie darlings of the 2000s until more recently. its new music i am not famliar with. i especially enjoy rock, or folk, or punk, of either big label, or indie bands but any genre is cool. i know the big names like rush and tragically hip, arcade fire, etc so tell me about newcomers. 

[crematedman]

@coalminecanary this should be your first stop!

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[Jack]

Hey @coalminecanary!

What a great topic. The Canadians really have a rich and diverse musical scene, so I’d love to share my two cents on this subject with you.

I usually rely on larger indie bands for my fix of Canadian sounds...

Wolf Parade

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These Montrealians have been going for years, crafting intricate art rock. This, a single from their latest album, was only released earlier this month.

Arcade Fire

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An obvious choice, but Win Butler and his entourage demand a mention when discussing Canadian bands. Here's a banger from their double-album, 'Reflektor'.

Alvvays

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Jangly, sugary twee indie sweethearts from the fine city of Toronto. This bunch sound more like they're from Scotland, with their Teenage Fanclub and Belle & Sebastian tendencies.

Japandroids

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This emotive noise duo hailing from Vancouver sound like Brand New with the Death From Above 1979 line-up mirrored. Anthemic and energetic in equal measure.

Andy Shauf

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Move aside, Alvvays... The twee-est man in Canada wants to claim his indie throne. Andy Shauf resides in little Regina, a town in the central-most region of Canada, Saskatchewan. He creates genuinely beautiful music. Arrangements and instrumentation are perfectly balanced.

Tokyo Police Club

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Toronto's Tokyo Police Club have been on the fringes of indie rock for the best part of a decade. They deserve much more recognition.

I'd also check out anything from Paper Bag Records, one of Canada's finest indie labels. Here's a few key artists with affiliations to the label...

Sarah Neufeld

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Frog Eyes

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The Acorn

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Rachel Zeffira

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Hope this inspires you to start really digging into the wealth of Canadian music!

And finally, get yourself onto the main man Drizzy... the mastermind of OVO Sound, the nicest guy in Hip-Hop, and 15th most listened-to artist in the world on Spotify. It'd be a crime to miss him out of this.

Don't switch on him, he's got big plans.

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🇨🇦

🎶

[Soundofus]

@coalminecanary

For completing what @Jack already mentioned, you can listen also :

The Barr Brothers

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The Weather Station

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Weaves

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Blue Hawaii

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Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton

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Kacy & Clayton

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Jane's Party

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Whitehorse

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Broken Social Scene

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Needles//Pins

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[Jack]

Good shout, @Soundofus!

I forgot about Weaves. Also a big fan of Emily Haines; I really enjoyed 'Choir of the Mind' earlier this year.

Enjoying a lot of the other suggestions which I'm not familiar with, too! 

Looks like @coalminecanary has got a ton of new music to check out already 🙂

[coalminecanary]

lol yes indeed a good healthy start. thanks so much everyone i do know a few of the artists mentioned but plenty i dont so will be scoping those out. thanks

[Sebasty]

I went to load up my explr.fm map as well. Most of what I listen to is more from electronic forests, but here are what I like:

Caribou, I adore Odessa and Four Tet remix of 'Melody day' a lot. Sort of dreamy sounding experimental electronic music mixed with psychedelia, krautrock and breakbeat.

Solvent is a very interesting creature, he is deeply interested in synthesizers and robot music. I personally like 'Think Like Us', but you might like 'Loss For Words' remixed by Vector Lovers (first song in the Popular list). His live performance is quite cool to observe.
Then there's this ambient electronic artist called Loscil. So if you like to drift off to minimal ambient atmospheric sounds, he might be a good choice.

He or another ambient electronic musician called SubtractiveLAD, whose 'From Seed' is so great for me. This song has the mellow darkness of some unusual landscape evolving...

I also present you something a little wilder - Venetian Snares!
He tries many genres, but his experimentalism and, I suppose, curiosity of trying out things in new and weird ways results in pretty amazing and strange things. 'Hajnal' has some great degree of insanity in it. 'Öngyilkos Vasarnap' might be one of his more accessible sounds.

I find that Kid Koala needs a mention too when speaking of Canadian artists. 🙂

[osornios]

Hey @coalminecanary

Canada has a great tradition in female vocalists, so I'm gonna list you some you might or might not know:

Lights

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Tamia

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Cœur de Pirate

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Grimes

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Neko Case (not really canadian but part of The New Pornographers)

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Hope you like them. 🙂

[rossi1911]

@coalminecanary Have you ever heard of Danko Jones?

https://open.spotify.com/track/5eJRh54QRcvBsYuqJV3ST1

[Jack]

Ahh, good shout @Sebasty! I forgot about Caribou and Venetian Snares. Some seriously interesting electronic music comes out Canada, and I'm always forgetting about it.

Venetian Snares has always been the Aphex Twin of Winnipeg for me; I love his glitchy break style. Anything on Planet Mu Records is always a captivating (if somewhat horrifying) listen. Check out Jlin and Floating Points from the label. Although not Canadian, worth a mention for you as a fan of electronic music.

And @osornios, you've taught me something here, I didn't know that Grimes was Canadian! That last album was great, really solid tunes 🙂

[Soundofus]

That would be a shame to forget Vancouver singer-songwriter Dan Bejar, leading Canadian band Destroyer, having a new album out today (October 20, 2017).

https://open.spotify.com/track/1mnkkWNzknewxadvilCHkj

[coalminecanary]

thankyou all for your recommendations 🙂 i appreciate it. i will be checking out all of those i do not allready know. and there are many to look up so thats great. i love how canadian music has so many fans and people who appreciate it. sometimes i feel like our country is over looked by others, as a place with talented entertainers and poets and musicians, but our art scene is diverse and dynamic and this is evidence of that. thanks. 

[soundson]

.. this weeknd's almost rock song is too good not to be mentioned..

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[Audiozobe]

Lots of acts not be missed have already been listed here, it's so very awesome. I've got the one suggestion, something the all powerful Spotify algorithm suggested to me recently, and that I found out afterward was canadian and really hooked me up:

https://open.spotify.com/album/5yCeAMpSAsH2Vy7ytf012z

It traces a blurry line between pop guitar and industrial style textures with some solid melodies.

I'll come back with some more propositions later on this week. Excellent topic!

[coalminecanary]

ok so its been a busy couple weeks. so i just checked some posts. and wow look at how many wonderful suggestions there are here. its so wonderful to see so many people loving on canadian music. i will be checking out as many as i can. thankyou so much everyone for keeping the conversation going. please continue to pass it on. 

[Emilyilott]

Bare naked ladies, Alan doyel(Great big sea, The beautiful Gypsies)

[Hazer1]

Slamboni!

They are like a Canadian Sublime. They just dropped a new record called ‘150’, too. 

Here’s the link: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2bPSZovipPWUI335JTEBx4?si=d7WaKCjXTdC_Amdnkb25Pg

[Spanglemaker]

Moonface

https://open.spotify.com/track/6vOyYJBiV8VFlnkvPE8wHP

[BoazMayhem]

Thats cool 🙂

[BLKROZE]

A relatively new up and coming hip hop artist is Sheperd from the Toronto region. His music does tend to blend in various other genres like electronic and rnb 🙂 

Freeze