After dropping his stage name Final Fantasy, Owen Pallett released the widely praised Heartland, in January 2010. The album won Pallett his second Polaris Prize nomination (he won the first ever award for Final Fantasy’s He Pooes Clouds in 2006). He would go on to open for the widely publicized arena tour of fellow Canadians and former collaborators Arcade Fire and Spoon, and he released the A Swedish Love Story EP during subsequent fall gigs opening for the National and Dirty Projectors, two other indie acts with sudden bursts on the pop charts. In releasing the EP later in the same year as his widely praised LP, Pallett seems to have borrowed a technique from Domino labelmates Animal Collective (in 2009, the Fall Be Kind EP came on the heels of Merriweather Post Pavilion), no doubt refueling album-of-the-year-poll considerations.