A singer/songwriter, film composer, and pianist based in Montreal, Canada, Patrick Watson makes explorative chamber pop with his band — also called Patrick Watson — often blending spare indie pop, synthesizer experiments, cinematic orchestral song, and a melancholy tone. The group’s second album, 2006’s Close to Paradise, won the Polaris Prize. After composing music for several short films, Watson made his feature-length debut with It’s Not Me, I Swear! in 2008. Released in 2015, Love Songs for Robots became his band’s fourth straight album to reach Canada’s Top Ten, and he found success again in 2019 with the arrival of his sixth long-player, Wave. After Watson went viral with the decade-old single “Je Te Laisserai des Mots” to the tune of hundreds of millions of streams, he released 2022’s Better in the Shade, which drew on literary inspirations.

Though he was born in California, Patrick Watson was raised outside of Montreal in Hudson, Quebec. After singing in local church choirs as a boy, he sang and played keyboards in the ska band while in high school. They released an eponymous LP via in 1998. After graduating, he left the band and began to explore other types of music, including electronica and ambient, and went on to study jazz and classical piano performance, composition, and arranging at Vanier College in Montreal. In 2001, he released the album Waterproof9, which consisted of experimental music accompaniment to a photo book by Brigitte Henry titled Waterproof. In 2002, he decided to start a four-piece chamber pop group, bringing in bassist Mishka Stein, drummer Robbie Kuster (both of whom he had met at university), and former guitarist Simon Angell. The group, which was technically still a solo project with a backing band, released Just Another Ordinary Day and began performing around Canada. They were booked at the 2005 Pop Montreal Festival, a show that led to the formation of , the label that issued Watson’s sophomore album, Close to Paradise (which featured the same band), in 2006. Also charting in France and the Netherlands, it reached number four on Canada’s album chart, and was awarded the Polaris Prize in 2007.