Austra

All Music Guide:

Named for the Latvian goddess of light, Toronto's Austra feature singer/keyboardist Katie Stelmanis, drummer Maya Postepski, and bassist Dorian Wolf. Stelmanis is a classically trained vocalist and pianist who joined the Canadian Children's Opera at age ten and intended to pursue a career in classical music before falling in love with punk, industrial, and electronic music. In 2008 she released the solo album Join Us, and was also a member of the band Galaxy with Postepski. When that group disbanded, the pair joined forces with Wolf, a former member of Spiral Beach, and initially called themselves Private Life, but switched to Austra after discovering another band with that name. Their debut single, The Beat and the Pulse, arrived in early 2011, and their full-length debut, Feel It Break (most of which was recorded in Stelmanis' home studio and mixed by Damian Taylor), arrived in May of that year on Domino Records. By the time of 2013's Olympia, the project had evolved into a six-piece featuring keyboardist Ryan Wonsiak and backing vocalists Romy and Sari Lightman, allowing for more live instrumentation and interplay between bandmembers.

Wikipedia:

Austra is a Canadian electronic music band from Toronto, Ontario, formed in 2009. The band consists of Katie Stelmanis (vocals, keyboards), her former Galaxy bandmate Maya Postepski (drums) and former Spiral Beach bassist Dorian Wolf. They played a number of early shows under the name Private Life before learning that another band was already using the name; they subsequently named the band after Stelmanis' middle name Austra, which is also the name of the goddess of light in Latvian mythology. Austra also includes twin backing singers Sari and Romy Lightman of Tasseomancy and keyboardist Ryan Wonsiak of Ze and the Boyfriends.

Austra's debut album Feel It Break was released on May 17, 2011 by Paper Bag Records. On July 6, 2011, the album was shortlisted for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize, but lost out to Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. Feel It Break was included on several year-end critics' lists; notably, both the Toronto Star and New York named it the best album of 2011, with the former calling it "an outright stunner". Stereogum named Austra a Band to Watch on March 14, 2011.

Their second album Olympia was released on June 18, 2013, from which the first single Home was released on March 7, 2013.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).