The Austin 100: Helena Deland

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Helena Deland Maya Fuhr/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Maya Fuhr/Courtesy of the artist

Helena Deland

Maya Fuhr/Courtesy of the artist

Hometown: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Genre: Rock

Why We're Excited: Pinning a single style to singer-songwriter Helena Deland is a big job: She's been dribbling out songs in a series of unwieldily titled EPs (From the Series of Songs "Altogether Unaccompanied" Vols. I-IV), each of which hints at a few different possible directions in genre. She's assembled an indie-rock band to accompany her on tour, but listen to the smooth and sweet synth-pop jam "Claudion," and you'll hear an artist who's also enormously suited to the intimacy of music made on laptops. Deland describes her sound — to the extent that there's just one — as "sincere pop," which is as fine a descriptor as any.