In 2025, we published numerous profiles of artists, both local and international, established and up-and-coming. Shared here are 10 that stood out and connected with readers throughout the year.
Grammy-winning Musician and Composer Arooj Aftab Weaves Soundscapes That Defy Genre
“It’s kind of my style to find the common thread between uncommon things,” says Grammy-winning musician, vocalist, and composer Arooj Aftab. “It excites me to do that through music: to weave a pattern that isn’t immediately visible or build a bridge between different sounds.” Read more.
On Start Anew, Shad Finds Hope and Courage on the Other Side of Fear
“I realized Start Anew means the same thing as what I was reflecting on,” Shad says, on the line from Toronto. “It’s just the other side of it. As much as I was thinking about endings, what I was really thinking about is how we have to pass through endings to get to something better—and how there’s no way around it, and there’s no shortcut. It just takes courage.” Read more.
Vancouver Musician bbno$ Is Full of Gratitude and Excitement as His Star Rises
“Right now, it’s kind of go, go, go,” Alexander Gumuchian says. “Just make as much money as I can, have as much fun as I can. Do as much as I can right now and then, you know,” he grins, adjusting his signature gold wire-frame glasses, “ideally find a wife and settle down kind of thing.” Read more.
Vancouver-Based Modern Biology Creates Music From Sound Waves Emitted by Plants
As I sample each dish, Tarun Nayar plays ambient music that is textural, moody, atmospheric—a trippy translation of the plant ingredients’ bioelectricity. The Buddha’s hand is murmuring. The Japanese sudachi fruit is singing. Kind of. Nayar is channelling their fluctuations of energy—via electrodes and clips attached to the fruit—into a sonic composition at the intersection of music and biology. Read more.
Vancouver Alt-Pop Musician Sophia Stel Is Ready to Take on the World
Sophia Stel’s debut EP Object Permanence, released in September 2024, was an immediate game-changer, catching the attention of A.G. Cook (the U.K. record producer best known for his collaborations with Charli xcx), who asked her to open for him at a gig in Los Angeles. A year later, she released How to Win at Solitaire, another EP. In the meantime, a track from Object Permanence—“I’ll Take It”—had enjoyed a viral moment when Australian pop sensation Troye Sivan clipped it for an Instagram post. Read more.
Canadian Cultural Icon Tantoo Cardinal Looks for the Next Chapter in Her Career
Tantoo Cardinal takes the accolades with a grain of salt, chuckling when I bring up her 2025 Equity in Entertainment Award win at The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Canada summit and awards gala in Toronto. “You know, equity—we’re not there yet. We’re not anywhere near that, but I guess we’re closer than we’ve been,” she says. “Being present in the moment of acquiescence, I guess, is as close as we’re getting to equity, really.” Read more.
B.C. Filmmaker Sophy Romvari Faces Ghosts From the Past in Her Award-Winning First Feature
Though the film is, Sophy Romavari says, undoubtedly personal, it is not a memoir. “Even for me watching the film, it’s a version of the reality, but the reality was much more harsh,” she says. “My brother as a person was much more extreme. If we saw this in a theatre as a family, it wouldn’t be ‘Oh, that’s us.’ It’s more a simulacrum.” Read more.
Dead Bob, Nomeansno, and the Punk Ethos of Vancouver Musician Kristy-Lee Audette
Nomeansno are no more, but John Wright, Rob’s younger brother, has a new band, Dead Bob, named for the little hanging figure on the cover of Nomeansno’s You Kill Me EP (and for a Nomeansno song off Sex Mad, their second LP). A Vancouver supergroup, Dead Bob also includes Ford Pier (a former member of D.O.A. and the Show Business Giants), Colin MacRae (of the intensely proggy Victoria punk vehicle Pigment Vehicle), Byron Slack (of Invasives), and, rare among bands in the Nomeansno penumbra, a woman, Kristy-Lee Audette, who at 39 is the youngest member and the one with the briefest local history (Her main band is Rong. Their debut EP came out just before COVID-19 hit, back in 2019). Read more.
Hunger Games Star Whitney Peak Talks BFFs, Family, and Growing Up in B.C.
She may only be 22, but Whitney Peak has been steadily making an impression since she scored a small part playing opposite Idris Elba in Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game in 2017. Recurring spots in the television dramas Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Home Before Dark followed. But the game-changing year for Peak was 2020: first she was offered a lead part on the reboot of Gossip Girl, and then came the call from the House of Chanel. She was still only 17. Read more.
How Canadian Funnyman Colin Mochrie Became the Face of Improv
When ABC launched an American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 1998, it recruited Canadian funnymen Colin Mochroie and Ryan Stiles, and the show’s long tenure made them household names, along with co-stars including Wayne Brady, Greg Proops, and Brad Sherwood—well, they’re all household names in the types of households that revere lightning-quick thinking and absurdist comedy, at any rate. Read more.
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