This week, KCRW’s Andrea Domanick is bringing you a selection of artists handpicked at M For Montreal, a music festival and conference in Quebec’s largest city showcasing artists and labels across Canada and around the world. It’s helped launch the careers of acts like Grimes, Mac DeMarco, Shame, Jazz Cartier, Dilly Dally, Charlotte Cardin, and many more, so get in on this fresh crop of rising talent while the gettin’s good.
Choses Sauvages – "Pression”
Like to sweat? Choses Sauvages (“savage things” en français) are here to wring every last drop from your pores. We almost didn’t catch these guys, but longtime fest booker Mikey Rishwain Bernard insisted, hailing them as *the* big thing coming out of Montreal right now. Thank God he did. Imagine the feral lovechild of LCD Soundsystem, Talking Heads, and Joy Division, and you’re close — no exaggeration when I say there wasn’t a still body in the house as the band whipped (sometimes literally, with the mic cable) the crowd into an ecstatic dancefloor frenzy. Their secret sauce culls from the most visceral parts of genres — from disco, to punk, to Afrobeat, to electro — distilling it all into a sound all their own. Their records are a bop, but the live show is a must. They recently played their debut LA show at KCRW’s School Night, so count on us having them back soonest. Until then, “Pression” is a great place to start.
La Sécurité – “Serpent”
Rumor has it Tom Windish flew in to M specifically to see and sign this band, and we get the urgency. The art-punk collective arrived in 2023 with their debut Stay Safe! (via Montreal’s superb Mothland label) as an artist fully formed, serving up self-possessed chaos on stage and record alike. Drawing on punk, New Wave, krautrock, Riot Grrrl, and a certain je ne sais quoi, the bilingual outfit spits haywire odes to living dangerously over minimalist, off-kilter arrangements, amounting to a listen that’s as tight as it is exhilarating. It’s no surprise the band features members of other Montreal mainstays like Choses Sauvages, Laurence-Anne, and Silver Dapple, a thrilling example of the creative cross-pollination upon which the city thrives. Ready your side-eye and hit the dance floor with “Serpent.”
HAWA B – “Surrender”
The Club Soda main stage at M For Montreal is usually reserved for seasoned acts, but for Montreal bandleader, composer, and singer-songwriter Nadia Hawa Baldé — aka HAWA B — the festival made an exception. HAWA B may only have one EP, Sad In A Good Way, under her belt, but it’s more than enough evidence of her singular, complex approach to synthesizing elements of jazz, R&B, and alt-rock. Magnetic on stage, belting and bending in tandem with a lone sax player, her presence as a vocalist is overshadowed only by her expansive arrangements, which would feel right at home in LA alongside luminaries like Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, and Sudan Archives. Let “Surrender” be the Bat Signal for a collab.
Population II – “Lune Rouge”
Population II makes an art out of walking the line between sophistication and madness, musicians’ musicians who bring heavy-heavy psych onslaughts buoyed by funk rhythms and punk discipline. This year’s Électrons libres du québec saw the band touring with OSEES, and we’re already manifesting them sharing a stage with the likes of King Gizz at Desert Daze. “Lune Rouge” is a cascading chugger off of Électrons, a thrilling cut of the sound they explode with improvisation live. Queue this one up to get you going on mornings you’ve overslept.
Cartel Madras – “Drift”
Hailing from Calgary, Alberta, experimental hip-hop duo Cartel Madras — sisters Bhagya "Eboshi" Ramesh and Priya "Contra" Ramesh — are already turning heads with their self-declared “Goonda Rap,” melding house, hip-hop, punk, electronic, and South Indian influences for earworm party tracks overlaid by spitfire verses. They’re already signed to Sub Pop — expect even bigger things in the year ahead. In the meantime, throw on “Drift” while getting ready with the gorls for a night out… of confronting your haters.