Feist

Leslie Feist’s ethereal indie pop is irresistible, even when her soothing alto plunges deep into eerie, impenetrable worlds. It’s why she can deliver a perfect, prismatic pop hit like “1234” and cover Peaches’ electroclash cut “Lovertits” with equal sophistication, and why artists like James Blake and Mastodon are so eager to cover her work. Known as Feist, the Canadian singer/songwriter (born in Nova Scotia in 1976) has been anything but predictable. At 15, she founded the Calgary punk band Placebo (not to be confused with the London rock group), a move that subsequently tore up her vocal cords. She soon headed to Toronto, where she met the aforementioned Peaches, with whom she lived, toured and collaborated with on 2000’s The Teaches of Peaches. In the following years, Feist joined indie-rock collective Broken Social Scene and began working closely with pianist/producer Chilly Gonzales, who helped her lay down the groundwork for her 2004 major-label debut Let It Die. The indie wanderer was now a bona fide chanteuse, elegantly crafting silky lounge-pop reveries like “Mushaboom”. By 2007’s The Reminder, she had reached pop’s pinnacle, earning a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album and hit singles with buoyant earworms “1234” (boosted by a memorable iPod ad) and “My Moon My Man”. Going forward, Feist has retained that pop accessibility while filtering it through increasingly abstract arrangements, often with Gonzalez and producer/multi-instrumentalist Mocky by her side. On 2011’s Metals, she stirred up the spirit of Big Sur with bluesy baroque-pop melodies both sparse and sweeping, while 2017’s more stripped-down Pleasure covers doom and death with groove and grace. “I only have one motivation,” she told Apple Music. “Whatever step I take, whatever floor I sweep, I want to do it fully.”