There’s a lot of darkness in Austra’s music, but it’s somehow fitting that the group shares a name with a Latvian goddess of light. While their debut record Feel It Break is a minor key affair, the siren voice of frontwoman Katie Stelmanis is pretty near mythical.
Before finding indie rock acclaim with Austra, Katie Stelmanis had a childhood start in choir and opera. Although she's adapted her style, her training still shines through.
"I started singing in choirs and I've been performing since I was 10 years old, so I've been singing pretty consistently since that age," the Canadian vocalist says. "I did choir, then I studied opera privately for my later teenage years, and I guess that kind of influenced the way I sing now a lot."
Her voice is the first thing you notice, soaring wraith-like over bubbling synthesiser lines. Sounding something like a more conventional Björk singing along to B-sides from The Knife, there's a gothic, stately quality to Austra's music. While Stelmanis' voice has retained a lot of its cultured nature, to get to this point she had to stir in some other ingredients. Discovering punk at age 18, she initially rebelled against her roots with current Austra drummer Maya Postepski in the Riot Grrrl-influenced act Galaxy.
"It took a long time to find a voice that wasn't an opera singing voice for me. I think that Galaxy was a really good transition because it was the complete opposite of what I was doing, and it forced me to learn how to sing in a different way that wasn't opera. I think that through just playing shows, I eventually developed a style that was my own."
