10 Artists to Watch 2006

>> Listen: Hear tunes from Amy Millan and other Artists to Watch.

A product of the same fertile Toronto-Montreal alt-rock scene that female singers Feist and Metric's Emily Haines call home, Amy Millan has spent the past six years as a full-time member of chamber-pop band Stars and a part-time member of indie collective Broken Social Scene. The songs on her solo debut, Honey From the Tombs, were actually written before those bands took off, during a lonesome period in the mid to late Nineties when she spent most of her days "by myself, in a bedroom, on a bed," she says. "Sitting alone in the bedroom is what you do in your twenties. I'm just glad I got into bands after that. On the tour bus, there's not a lot of room to feel sorry for yourself."

SOUND Fans of Millan's work with Stars will find her sweet chirp instantly recognizable on sparsely arranged alt-country tunes such as "Losin' You" and "He Brings Out the Whiskey in Me." But the pared-down context, she acknowledges, might catch people off guard. "It's interesting to have this record come out after having people know me as something else," she says. "It's hilarious, actually, because this is the girl I know. This music isn't a departure - it's the root of everything I'm doing now."

THIRTY AND DIRTY Millan notes that, though she missed playing these songs during her years on the road with Stars and BSS, she's glad she waited until she was a bit older to actually record them. "I'm thirty-two now, and you get your bitch card at thirty," she says with a laugh. "In your twenties, if you get in a studio with a couple guys turning knobs, it's easy to feel intimidated. Once I turned thirty, it was like, 'Turn the knob the other way - do it!' "

ON THE ROAD Millan will take Honey From the Tombs on the road this fall with a backing band that features members of Toronto's the Silts. "These guys play trombone and banjo and saw and balloon," she says. "Let's throw some balloon on there! The point was to get out of the bedroom. I want to turn the songs around and make them better with age." JENNY ELISCU

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