The Austin 100: Elisapie

By Stephen Thompson

Published March 5, 2019 at 5:01 AM EST

Hometown: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Genre: Folk

Why We're Excited: Elisapie is a singer, songwriter, filmmaker and indigenous Canadian activist whose songs rotate among the English, French and Inuktitut languages. On her fourth album, The Ballad of the Runaway Girl, she synthesizes stories from her eventful life with hypnotic arrangements that channel '70s rock, indigenous folk music and the low, moody rumble of barnstormers like Tom Waits and Morphine.

Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)

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