Klô Pelgag

Over the course of her career, Quebec’s Klô Pelgag has transcended her humble singer/songwriter roots to transform herself into an ever-evolving musical and visual art project. Born in 1990, the Sainte-Anne-des-Monts native settled in Montreal in her late teens, before starting to perform under her mysterious stage name (which is actually just a playfully bastardised version of her birth one, Chloé Pelletier-Gagnon). Klô Pelgag’s early releases (2012’s self-titled EP and 2013’s L’alchimie des monstres) were rooted in a theatrical indie-folk whimsy that earned her the Félix Award for New Artist of the Year. However, 2016’s L'étoile thoracique presented a bolder vision and more expansive arrangements that cleared the way for Pelgag’s complete evolution into a Kate Bush-esque art-pop auteur on 2020’s Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs. That album’s colourful artwork and striking videos burnished Pelgag’s growing reputation as a self-mythologising visual provocateur in the tradition of Björk and Grimes, raising her profile outside Quebec and landing her on the 2021 Polaris Music Prize shortlist.