Breaking Artist: Tegan and Sara

Who: Calgary-born identical twins who started touring Canada on Greyhound buses in 2000.

Sounds Like: Smart, nuanced guitar-and-keyboard pop that merges Sara's angular, hook-filled ditties and Tegan's melancholic odes to heartbreak.

Three Things You Should Know:
1. Tegan and Sara have five albums out, but 2004's So Jealous put them on the map in a major way: The album won a Juno (the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy) and the White Stripes released an EP named after the girls' angular pop gem "Walking With A Ghost" that included a high-wattage cover of the track.
2. The 26-year-old identical twins may look and sound alike, but they insist they're totally different. "It's impossible for me to think Tegan sounds like me," Sara says. "I literally might as well be in a band with Nick Cave."
3. They've been gleeful self-promoters since they were three years old. "For Christmas, my parents got us one of those Fisher-Price tape records," says Sara. "We were total narcissists: All we wanted to do was listen to our own voices."

Get It: Tegan and Sara's new album The Con is in stores now. Check out our video for footage of the band working in the studio with Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla, debating what to name their record and chatting about their favorite live shows.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

More Song Stories entries »

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