Kalle Mattson is a Juno & Polaris Music Prize nominated singer/songwriter based in Ottawa. Since 2009 he has released four full-length albums & two EPs to critical & commercial acclaim. His first music video for “Thick As Thieves” gained over 1,000,000 views & was covered by Time Magazine, NPR & The Huffington Post. It was followed in 2014 by Mattson’s third full-length studio album, the Polaris Music Prize-nominated “Someday, The Moon Will Be Gold”, which was inspired by his hometown on the Canadian/U.S. border and the death of his mother five years prior. It received glowing reviews from Pitchfork, Pop Matters, Rolling Stone, & Exclaim called it - “simply, a benchmark in fearless songwriting.” It was promoted by multiple tours across Canada, the US & Europe. August 2015 saw the release of a new EP, “Avalanche”, which Mattson described as a mini-LP concerning the twenty-something miasma of "anxiety, nostalgia, the past, the future." The music video for “Avalanche” received widespread media attention & was nominated for a 2016 Juno Award, a 2016 Much Music Video Award & won the 2016 Prism Prize. On 2018’s “Youth.”, Mattson set out to make a coming-of-age album about the in-between days of post-adolescence and pre-adulthood. It was released to rave reviews with Dominionated saying - “file it under instant classic.”
His newest project “summersets”, a duo with longtime collaborator Andrew Sowka, debuted in 2020 with a collection of narrative driven songs set in small town Northern Ontario centred around two characters who meet as summer is coming to end. Their full-length debut, ’small town story’ is out June 9th 2023. Mattson currently teaches at Carleton University.
Summersets:
Summersets is the new duo of Kalle Mattson, one of Canada's most acclaimed singer-songwriters, and Andrew Sowka, who apply Everly-esque harmonies to a song cycle spanning the life of two lovers, which ends in tragedy. Influenced by the storytelling of John Prine and delivered with the delicacy of Simon & Garfunkel, summersets' debut full-length, “small town story”, was produced by Jim Bryson (Kathleen Edwards, The Weakerthans) and is out June 9th 2023.
