Polaris Music Prize by Lezah Williamson

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Better late than never - that's my motto!

So this doesn't exactly fall under the category of 'news', as it's already a week old, but here goes.

the Winner of the 2007 Polaris Prize is Patrick Watson for 'Close to Paradise'.

The Polaris Prize is an award loosely based on the UK's Mercury Prize, but which recognizes alternative music acts that are springing from the burgeoning Canadian scene.

With first place ringing in at $20000, merely being nominated for the prize has been shown to have a huge impact on record sales for all nominated acts.

This year's acts were, once again, a fairly diverse group. In addition to Watson, there was the much touted favourites and front-runners, The Besnard Lakes; the commercially popular Feist (have you heard her new iPod ad?) and Arcade Fire; The Dears; Julie Doiron; Junior Boys; Miracle Boys; Chad Vangallen; and the wonderfully named Joel Plaskett Emergency.

The Polaris Prize is not your usual run-of-the-mill popularity contest, as are some other prizes that will remain unnamed - last year's winner, folk based Final Fantasy(an offshoot project for Arcade Fire member Owen Pallett) beat out well known, more commercial acts like The New Pornographers and Broken Social Scene.