One of the hottest acts around at the moment is Canadian band Austra. They are set to perform at Incubate in September! The Quietus did an interview with frontwoman Katie Stelmanis. Before you go any further, check out the stream of the entire album on NPR Music!

And secondly, here’s the interview Katie did with our friends at The Quietus.

“That was fun,” says Katie Stelmanis as our interview winds to a close. I look for traces of sarcasm but her brown eyes are earnest. That’s curious. During our 35 minutes together she gave the impression of someone stoically tolerating a part of her job she’s not desperately keen to do.

This will not be the first time the singer of Toronto’s operatic dance trio Austra has been labelled cold. The classically trained 26-year-old’s vocal style has an icy edge that works in opposition to Maya Postepski (drums) and Dorian Wolf’s (bass) euphoric dance beats. By itself her voice sounds like a gothic Kate Bush or a ragged Zola Jesus. Adding Postepski, Wolf and a chunky synth has created a debut album that nods to the dancefloor while feeling strangely emotional at the same time.

Feel It Break might be Austra’s debut long-player, but is far from being Stelmanis’s first musical foray. Trained by the Canadian Children’s Opera aged 10, she spent 2005-2008 in the riot grrl-indebted band Galaxy and released a solo album Join Us in 2009. Along the way, she has appeared on Fucked Up’s 2008 album The Chemistry of Common Life.”

Read the whole interview here.