Arcade Fire have won the 2011 Polaris Music Prize for their third album "The Suburbs".
The group beat off stiff competition from the likes of Destroyer, Hey Rosetta! and Colin Stetson to bag the coveted award, which recognises Canada's best album of the last 12 months and is the equivalent of Britain's Barclaycard Mercury Prize.
Taking home a $30,000 cheque from the ceremony in Toronto last night (19.09.11), drummer
Jeremy Gara and multi-instrumentalist
Richard Parry thanked the judging panel of industry experts for the honour.
Jeremy said: "Anyone who is under 18 and playing music and everyone who has ever been on stage and had the opportunity to play music and have someone hear it, just stick with it, because in 20 years you could be up here and have an album much better than this."
Also nominated for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize was Austra's "Feel It Break", "Native Speaker" by Braids, "Seeds" by Hey Rosetta!, Destoyer's "Kaputt" and "Tigre Et Diesel" by Galaxie.
Elsewhere, The Weekend's "House Of Balloons", "Creep On Creepin' On" by Timber Timbre, Ron Sexsmith's "Long Player Late Bloomer" and "New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges" by Colin Stetson were also beaten to the award by Arcade Fire.
Previous years have seen the likes of Caribou, F----d Up and Final Fantasy take home the accolade.
Thanks for the report to Contactmusic.com.
