The Austin 100: La Force

By Stephen Thompson

Published March 5, 2019 at 5:01 AM EST

Hometown: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Genre: Rock

Why We're Excited: Ariel Engle is a recent addition to the Canadian supergroup Broken Social Scene, filling a role once held by Leslie Feist. Listen to her work as La Force, and you'll hear one clear reason the band thought of her to fill the bill: She's got that same smoky, haunting vibe, landing somewhere between detachment and almost discomfiting intimacy. To delve into "Lucky One" is to hang on her every lushly appointed, impeccably controlled word.

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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