A Canadian singer/songwriter with a guileless voice, Nell Smith made an impressive debut when she was just 14 years old with 2021's Where the Viaduct Looms, an album of Nick Cave covers featuring the Flaming Lips as her backing band.

While growing up in Fernie, British Columbia, Smith became a huge fan of the Flaming Lips and started attending their concerts with her parents when she was ten years old. Wearing a parrot costume and singing along to every song, she was difficult to miss, and Lips frontman Wayne Coyne noticed her in the crowd at a 2018 show in Calgary. When he sang a David Bowie song to her and she sang back, it was the beginning of their musical connection. Smith and her father kept in touch with Coyne, and sent him the songs Nell was working on. When the COVID-19 global pandemic made a planned trip to Oklahoma to record together in 2020 impossible, Coyne had Smith record covers of songs by Nick Cave -- an artist Coyne chose because Smith's unfamiliarity with his work would bring a fresh perspective to her performances -- that he and the rest of the band fleshed out remotely. The results were Where the Viaduct Looms, a trippy and bittersweet set that Bella Union released in November 2021. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi