Feist wins U.S. prize for best emerging artist

Canadian singer Feist racked up another international honour Monday, winning the 2007 Shortlist Music Prize, a U.S. award designed to highlight emerging artists.

Feist, the stage name of singer Leslie Feist, already has four Grammy and five Juno nominations and is also a finalist in the Brit and Indie awards.

Therelease of her 2007 album The Reminder marked a breakthrough for the singer, who is based in Toronto and France.

Her song 1,2,3,4 had unprecedented media exposure through an Apple iPod ad although her YouTube video for the same song, with an impressive dance routine filmed in a single shot, made her a media darling long before Apple caught up with her.

Feistbeat outnine otherfinalists for the seventh annual Shortlist Prize, billed as the U.S. equivalent of Britain's influential Mercury Prize. Her competitors included fellow Canadians Arcade Fire and Stars, M.I.A. and Spoon.

To qualify, artists must be musical innovators who have sold fewer than 500,000 albums in the U.S.

Feist, who was born in Nova Scotia and raised in Calgary, wasa vocalist for the Calgary punk band Placebo before moving to Toronto and working with Peaches and By Divine Right.

She and a group of Toronto musician friends formed the indie rock super group Broken Social Scene in 2001. In 1999, Feist released a solo album, Monarch (Lay Down Your Jewelled Head), and in 2004 released Let It Die.

The Reminder is herthird solo effort.