Montreal art-rock act Karkwa wins Canada’s Mercury/AMP equivalent, the Polaris Prize.
The independent act snatched the award from far better known Canadians such as Tegan & Sara, Caribou, Broken Social Scene and Besnard Lakes.
Karkwa’s album Les Chemins de Verre scored the prize for Best Album Of The Year.
It’s the first French-language album to win in the five year history of the Polaris Prize.
With the award comes $20,000 and the honour of standing alongside previous winners Fucked Up, Caribou, Patrick Watson, and Final Fantasy.
Karkwa (a phonetic reading of the French word for a quiver of arrows) formed in 1998, and this is their fourth album.
Singer and guitarist Louis-Jean Cormier was reportedly genuinely shocked to win.
He said at the ceremony, “It's an unbelievable thing to win this prize. We have a lot of respect for this contest and we think they do it for the right reason,” he said.
“It's not ‘I would like to thank my mother, I would like to thank my dog.’ No, man — it is just the music!”
If you’d like to hear songs from the Best Canadian Album of the last twelve months, head over to Karkwa’s myspace.
