by Andrew Tijs - September 21 2010

Montreal art-rock act Karkwa wins Canada’s Mercury/AMP equivalent, the Polaris Prize.

The independent act snatched the award from far better known Canadians such as Tegan & Sara, Caribou, Broken Social Scene and Besnard Lakes.

Karkwa’s album Les Chemins de Verre scored the prize for Best Album Of The Year.

It’s the first French-language album to win in the five year history of the Polaris Prize.

With the award comes $20,000 and the honour of standing alongside previous winners Fucked Up, Caribou, Patrick Watson, and Final Fantasy.

Karkwa (a phonetic reading of the French word for a quiver of arrows) formed in 1998, and this is their fourth album.

Singer and guitarist Louis-Jean Cormier was reportedly genuinely shocked to win.

He said at the ceremony, “It's an unbelievable thing to win this prize. We have a lot of respect for this contest and we think they do it for the right reason,” he said.

“It's not ‘I would like to thank my mother, I would like to thank my dog.’ No, man — it is just the music!”

If you’d like to hear songs from the Best Canadian Album of the last twelve months, head over to Karkwa’s myspace.