Deli Readers,
Our Best of Toronto Poll for Emerging Artists has been – as usual – a lengthy and painstaking journey which took us through prairies of numbers, horizons filled with band names, and a dense, (mostly) joyous rain of music. We have finally reached our destination and we can announce the final results!
1. SATE
Hitherto, the husky soul voice, applied to hard-rock production, has been a forced aesthetic. An argument could be made for solo artist Sate – our Toronto Best Emerging Artist of 2015 – having rectified the situation. Unhinged rockers like "What Did I Do" and "Warrior" (streaming)convince the longer (and more fiercely) she sings.
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2. Dilly Dally
Dilly Dally are generating a serious buzz all over right now. They toured through the USA last year and even cracked Rolling Stone’s List of Bands You NEED to know. 2 guys and 2 gals in this band…so they’re like ABBA…except with Pixies-esque rhythms and undeniable melodies over perfectly constructed grunge tunes. They were just announced as a headliner for CMW in May. This track "Desire" is the real deal!
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3. Ol’CD
Ol’CD is gettin’ mad love from everyone involved with the Deli these days. They were #1 on the Readers Poll and a bronze medal for the FINAL results ain’t too shabby. These fellas have catchy-ass garage rock tunes infused with some surf elements. A real party band. Don’t miss the chance to hop along at one of their upcoming shows.
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Check out our poll’s top 10 below, and don’t forget to get even deeper, exploring all the finalists organized by genre:
ALT ROCK – ELECTRO+HIP HOP – GARAGE ROCK – INDIE POP/ROCK – POST HARDCORE/90’S ROCK – PSYCH/NOISE ROCK – ROOTS MUSIC
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If you wonder how this chart came into existence, here is how it all went down: first, we let the local bands submit their music (for free), and got our Deli editors to pick the nominees. Then we polled a list of 15+ Toronto scene expert (our jury) and asked them to nominate 3 more bands of their choice each (3 points for the top choice, then 2 and 1). Then we polled our readers. We tried to keep things open for each single genre, from Indie Rock to Roots Music to Hip Hop.
If you are a geek interested in all the subtelties related to how this poll works, you can read its rules here (happy reading!). But if all you care about is the awesome new music Toronto produced in the year 2015, this list is all you need. Enjoy!
Many Thanks to our Jurors: Mike Roth (Artist Manager for Dala), Kiran Singh (Drake), Adam Bentley (Auter Research), Mike Religa (Indie88), Ben Pearlman (Collective Concerts), Craig Laskey (Horse Shoe Tavern), Denholm Whale (The SMiling Buddha), Justin O’Heir (Artistik Management), Mar Sellars (CIUT), Adam Carter (Homegrown Hamilton), Rivoli Booking Team, Yvonne (El Mocambo).
Hope you’ll find some awesome new artists you weren’t aware of!
The Deli’s Staff