female vocalists

Michelle Shocked is a traveller, a troubadour, a 'picker-poet', as they say in Texas. As a young feminist, she left Texas to travel, Kerouac-style, and was caught up in Reagan-era grassroots politics. Her musical career was ignited by a bootleg recording made around a Kerrville Folk Festival campfire on a Sony walkman. Released in England as ‘The Texas Campfire Tapes’ without Shocked’s authority, its success abroad enticed Mercury Records to offer the newcomer a recording contract.

Def FX, fronted by media darling and practicing Wiccan Fiona Horne and visual artist Sean Lowry, are an electronic-metal-pop group from Australia. The band were active from 1990 till their dissolution in 1997. They toured extensively and released several critically-acclaimed EPs on independent label Phantom Records (later collected together on the album Baptism) before their 1992 album debut, Light Speed Collision on EMI, which featured the singles Space Time Disco and No Time for Nowhere.

Honestly I don't know how I sound the way I do - My ears are always switched on searching for cool and unusual sounds. I hear them in the hustle and bustle of city streets, building sites, cafes, and playgrounds. I have a vivid imagination, and can tune out and step right into a dream, at the drop of a hat. My friends think that my head is in the clouds and my producer Jonathan Zion thinks there is no doubt about it. This doesn't bother me at all, it's how I write my songs. It's very magical. I just sit at my piano, gaze out my window and dream.

Austra is an electronic band from Toronto, ON, Canada comprising Katie Stelmanis (principal songwriter), Maya Postepski, and Dorian Wolf. They débuted with the single "The Beat And The Pulse" (November 2010, One Big Silence), and their latest release is the remix album "Sparkle" (July 2011, Domino) . Their début album album, "Feel It Break" (May 2011, Domino), came after a long sequence of bands for Stelmanis, representing a near ten year musical progression performing as an artist, then fleshed-out by a full band.