Progressive RockAlternative
Angine de Poitrine have won the 2026 Polaris Prize for Canadian album of the year with “Vol. II”, worth CAD 30,000 from the Slaight Family Foundation. The duo also took the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize, worth CAD 10,000, for “Fabienk”. The gala was on Tuesday 22 September at Massey Hall in Toronto and was broadcast by CBC.
The band are two musicians from Saguenay, in Quebec, who go by Khn and Klek: the first on guitar, the second on drums, both in black-and-white polka-dot boiler suits and long-nosed masks. They don’t use their own voices on stage or off it, they communicate in an invented language, and they say they are 333-year-old aliens. The music is microtonal math rock, almost entirely instrumental.
They collected the prize without saying a word, bowing to the crowd. It’s the second time they’ve accepted a Canadian award in silence: they did the same with a Billboard Canada Award in June.
In February this year a session of theirs for Seattle radio station KEXP went viral and now carries nineteen million views on YouTube. Since their debut, “Vol. I” (2024), the duo have sold out a headline international tour, opened for Jack White, shared a stage with Shania Twain and appeared on British and American late-night shows.
“This artistic project is the result of a lifetime of refinement, collaboration, a drive to push beyond one’s limits,” says the band’s manager, Sébastien Collin. The prize short list also included Aquakultre, Begonia, Bibi Club, Charlotte Cornfield, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Rochelle Jordan, Les Louanges, Peaches and Tanya Tagaq.
Text by Guillem Cardós