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Leslie Feist was born on February 13, 1976 in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her early ambition was to be a writer, but she got her start in music in 1991 at age 15 when she founded, and was the lead vocalist for a Calgary punk band called Placebo. She and her bandmates won a local Battle of the Bands competition and were awarded the opening slot at the festival Infest 1993, featuring the Ramones. But Feist's career was almost cut short, when she was forced to stop singing due to vocal chord damage. During this time she learned to play the guitar and experimented with indie/pop songwriting. She moved from Calgary to Toronto in 1996, and played in a few assorted projects including Peaches, an electro-punk outfit, and Broken Social Scene, an indie rock supergroup. Feist's solo début album, Monarch (Lay Your Jeweled Head Down), was released in 1999. However, it wasn't until her major label debut, Let It Die (2004) that she really broke through. Feist toured during 2004, 2005 and 2006 through North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia supporting Let It Die. She won two Canadian Juno Awards for "Best New Artist" and "Best Alternative Rock Album" in 2004. Sales of Let It Die totaled 500,000 internationally, and she was awarded a platinum record in Canada, as well as a gold album in France.



Feist's third solo album, The Reminder, was released worldwide in the spring of 2007. She toured internationally to promote the album, which features "1234", a song co-written by New Buffalo's Sally Seltmann that became a surprise hit after being featured in a commercial for the iPod nano. Time magazine named "1234" one of The 10 Best Songs of 2007, ranking it at #2. In 2008, Feist won another Juno Award for the single as "Single of the Year." Overall, The Remainder has sold over 1 million copies worldwide and has been certified Gold in the United States, proving that the young rebel who once sported a purple Mohawk has decidedly gone mainstream.