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The 2011 Polaris Music Prize shortlist announced

July 6th, 2011

Place your bets. The ten albums vying for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize were announced this afternoon by CBC Radio 3 personality Grant Lawrence and The Wedge‘s own Damian Abraham.

Bands returning to the shortlist include Montreal’s Arcade Fire with their Grammy- and Juno-winning album The Suburbs, as well as St. John’s Hey Rosetta! with Seeds. Both bands were previously nominated in 2007 and 2009, respectively.

This means there were eight newcomers to the shortlist, including Montreal’s Galaxie, whose Tigre et diesel is the only French language album to make the list; Montreal’s Colin Stetson, who played on not only his own album, New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, but also albums by Arcade Fire and Timber Timbre; and long-time singer-songwriters Destroyer and Ron Sexsmith.

Here is the full list:

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Sample: “We Used To Wait”
Austra – Feel It Break
Sample: “The Beat and the Pulse”
Braids – Native Speaker
Sample: “Lemonade”
Destroyer – Kaputt
Sample: “Chinatown”
Galaxie – Tigre et diesel
Sample: “Piste 1″
Hey Rosetta! – Seeds
Sample: “Yer Spring”
Ron Sexsmith – Long Player Late Bloomer
Sample: “Michael and His Dad”
Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges
Sample: “Judges”
Timber Timbre – Creep On Creepin’ On
Sample: “Black Water”
The Weeknd – House of Balloons
Download House Of Balloons.

The 2011 winner will be revealed at CTV’s Concert Hall studios at Toronto’s Masonic Temple on Monday, September 19th at the Polaris Music Prize gala. The event will be hosted by Grant Lawrence and Damian Abraham, and broadcast live on Sirius channel 152 and CBC Radio 3 and will also be broadcast on MuchMusic and muchmusic.com.

Past winners have been Final Fantasy, Patrick Watson, Caribou, Fucked Up, and Karkwa.

And in case you were wondering how yesterday’s predictions went, well, Cam Lindsay triumphed over Jason Richards with a score of 7/10 to 6/10.

Tags: arcade fire, Austra, Braids, Colin Stetson, Damian Abraham, Destroyer, Galaxie, Grant Lawrence, Hey Rosetta!, Polaris Music Prize, Ron Sexsmith, The Weeknd, Timber Timbre