Feist

Known primarily by the name Feist, Leslie Feist distinguishes herself through a warm yet haunting vocal presence and an idiosyncratic approach that merges indie rock, jazz-pop, bossa nova, and melodic campfire folk. Before rising to international pop prominence, she earned respect inside Canada’s alternative music circles, a status cemented by the critical favor shown toward her second solo album, the 2004 release Let It Die—which supplied the widely licensed track “Mushaboom” for film, television, and advertising—and by the mainstream breakthrough of 2007’s The Reminder. That record contained the buoyant singalong “1234,” which reached the Top Ten in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. Instead of chasing further anthemic hits, she offered the introspective, atmospheric Metals in 2011, an album that nevertheless entered the Top Ten throughout Europe and North America. Bolder hues such as bluesy rock surfaced in the unvarnished, unpredictable Pleasure of 2017, which performed strongly across European charts. Extending her sonic explorations, she adopted a more theatrical stance on 2023’s Multitudes, an album on which she tested the outer reaches of her voice through a blend of art rock and reflective avant-folk.

Born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada, on February 13, 1976, Feist grew up with an abstract painter and academic father named Harold and a mother, Lyn, who had pursued ceramics. Her parents separated while she was still an infant, prompting her mother to move with young Leslie and her older brother, Ben, to Regina, Saskatchewan. During her formative years in Regina and later Calgary, the academically inclined Leslie considered a writing career and first engaged with music by participating in a youth choir.

At age fifteen, her artistic path shifted when she joined the Calgary punk band Placebo—unrelated to the later U.K. neo-glam group—in 1991. Placebo secured a festival slot opening for the Ramones after winning a 1993 Battle of the Bands, and in 1995 the group issued the EP Don’t Drink the Bathwater. Feist, still developing as a vocalist, struggled with the band’s intense stage volume and departed in 1996 after sustaining vocal-cord damage. She relocated from Calgary to Toronto, where a physician advised her to refrain from singing for six months. During that period she focused on instrumental skills, teaching herself guitar, composing on a four-track recorder, learning bass, and performing briefly with Noah’s Arkweld. In 1998 she joined the indie outfit By Divine Right as rhythm guitarist and appeared on their 1999 album Bless This Mess. While with the band she assembled earlier compositions into her debut solo album, Monarch (Lay Down Your Jeweled Head), most copies of which sold at merchandise tables and attracted scant attention at the time.

After leaving By Divine Right, Feist shared an apartment with fellow musician Merrill Nisker. As Nisker cultivated the provocative persona Peaches, Feist participated by operating sock puppets onstage, supplying backing vocals, and contributing to the 2000 debut The Teaches of Peaches; she later sang on Peaches’ 2006 album Impeach My Bush. Following a U.K. tour with Peaches, Feist returned to Toronto in 2001 and accepted an invitation from Kevin Drew to join the collective Broken Social Scene. She toured with the group and added vocals to their 2002 album You Forgot It in People, which received widespread praise and a Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year. Later that year she moved to Paris, France, and, aided by producers Chilly Gonzales—whom she had met through Peaches—and Renaud Letang, known for his work with Manu Chao, began recording her second solo album. Issued in 2004, Let It Die showcased a polished fusion of pop, folk, indie, electronic, and South American influences that highlighted her poised yet forceful singing. The album earned strong reviews and solid independent sales; “Mushaboom” became a notable single, Let It Die captured the Juno for Best Alternative Rock Album, and Feist won Best New Artist.

While preparing her third album, she released the 2006 collection Open Season, comprising remixes, collaborations, and assorted material. Although Let It Die established her as a leading indie figure, 2007’s The Reminder transformed her into a mainstream star, entering the Canadian charts at number two and debuting at number sixteen in the United States. Sales accelerated after a major technology company featured “1234” in a prominent commercial, driving the track into the Top Ten of the U.S. Hot 100 through download sales. Follow-up singles “My Moon, My Man” and “I Feel It All” also charted successfully, The Reminder achieved gold status in the U.S. and multi-platinum certification in Canada—where it again peaked at number two—and secured five additional Juno Awards.

The Reminder’s success generated varied collaborations: Feist appeared on Stephen Colbert’s 2008 holiday special A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All, duetted with Jeff Tweedy on Wilco’s 2009 album Wilco: The Album, contributed to a Skip Spence tribute project overseen by Beck that also included Wilco, Jamie Lidell, and James Gadson, performed in Kevin Drew’s short film The Water, and joined the Muppets for a revised version of “1234” on Sesame Street. She also reunited with Broken Social Scene for several shows, one of which director Bruce McDonald documented in This Movie Is Broken. Amid these activities, Feist imposed a temporary hiatus on new solo material, instead collaborating with filmmaker Anthony Seck on the documentary Look at What the Light Did Now, which chronicled the making of The Reminder and its subsequent tour. She resurfaced in 2011 with Metals, a restrained collection that received favorable notices yet sounded less pop-oriented than its predecessor; the album still returned her to number two in Canada, reached a career-best number seven on the Billboard 200, and charted inside the Top 30 across Europe, the U.K., and Oceania.

In the following years she remained active without issuing substantial new Feist recordings: she penned “Fire in the Water” for a Twilight film, appeared in the 2011 movie The Muppets, released a split single with Mastodon for Record Store Day 2012, performed at the tenth-anniversary celebration of the Arts & Crafts label in 2013, and guested on tracks by Mocky and Kevin Drew. When she resurfaced after five and a half years with her fifth studio album, Pleasure, issued on Interscope/Polydor in April 2017, the record examined shifting emotional states and coincided with festival dates worldwide. Though it barely entered the upper half of the Billboard 200 in the U.S., the mercurial set climbed to number seven in Canada and reached the Top 20 in several European territories.

Shortly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, Feist welcomed her first child and relocated from Los Angeles to Toronto to be nearer family. Another profound loss occurred in May 2021 with the sudden passing of her father. As venues gradually reopened under capacity restrictions, she enlisted designer Rob Sinclair—whose credits include work with Queen, Peter Gabriel, and David Byrne’s American Utopia—to help shape a series of intimate, in-the-round performances titled Multitudes. The production premiered in Hamburg, Germany, in August 2021 before traveling to Canada and the U.S., introducing personal, experimental songs centered on themes of life and death. These pieces formed the core of her sixth studio album, Multitudes, released in April 2023 on Interscope/Polydor and recorded weeks earlier in a Northern California home studio alongside longtime collaborators Mocky and Robbie Lackritz plus Blake Mills.