Northern Dial Artist Profile

Dragonette

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Dragonette grew out of the Toronto songwriting partnership of Martina Sorbara and Dan Kurtz and became one of Canada's most durable electro-pop projects of the late 2000s and 2010s. Early albums Galore and Fixin to Thrill established the group's mix of glossy synth-pop, rock energy and sharp pop songwriting, while Sorbara's voice and persona became the centre of a catalogue built for both clubs and radio. Songs such as "I Get Around," "Take It Like a Man" and "Pick Up the Phone" helped define Dragonette before the project broke through to a much larger international audience.

That breakthrough came through the group's collaboration with French producer Martin Solveig on "Hello." The song became an international dance-pop hit and earned Dragonette a JUNO Award for Dance Recording of the Year in 2012. The band followed with Bodyparts, which itself received a JUNO nomination, and later Royal Blues. Through those records, Dragonette occupied a distinctive place between indie electro-pop and mainstream dance music, while Sorbara also built a parallel reputation as a songwriter for other artists.

By the 2020s, Dragonette had evolved primarily into Sorbara's project rather than a conventional fixed band. Twennies arrived in 2022 as the fifth studio album, extending the project's knack for bright, tightly constructed electronic pop. Dragonette's significance in Canadian pop lies in that long bridge between the country's indie-electro scene and the international dance-pop world, showing how a Toronto-rooted act could move between underground credibility, songwriting craft and global club culture without becoming musically anonymous.