Basia Bulat

Basia Bulat makes delicate folk and kaleidoscopic indie pop, frequently incorporating her signature autoharp. Born Barbara Josephine Bulat in 1984 in Toronto, the songwriter spent significant time as a child getting familiar with the oldies station favoured by her music teacher mother. While working toward an English degree in London, Ontario, she released her debut EP in 2005. This record provided enough momentum to hire Montreal producer Howard Bilerman to work on her first full-length, 2007’s Oh, My Darling, which is full of romantic songs that are both jubilant (“In the Night”) and melancholy (“Little Waltz”). Bulat’s assuredness after years of touring shines through on 2010’s finely tuned Heart of My Own, and she confronts the death of a loved one on 2013’s elegiac Tall Tall Shadow. She worked with My Morning Jacket’s Jim James for 2016’s Good Advice, signalling a shift in her sound toward lush pop while exploring the complexity of relationships. James produced 2020’s even poppier Are You in Love?, too. In 2022, Bulat released The Garden, an orchestral reimagining of older compositions that spotlights the breadth of her songwriting abilities.