Magi Merlin featured as Spotify's RADAR artist of the month

Spotify Canada has announced that Magi Merlin is the RADAR artist for the months of August and September, featuring on the cover of both the RADAR Canada and RADAR Global playlists. This announcement comes shortly after the release of POWER HOUSE, the debut album by the Montreal-based avant-garde pop and “broken R&B” artist. Her new effort has already racked up more than 1.6 million streams on Spotify alone. In addition to the playlists, Magi Merlin is featured on Spotify billboards in Times Square, NY (RADAR Global) and Downtown Toronto, ON (RADAR Canada).

Spotify’s RADAR program is grounded in supporting emerging artists from across the globe. While the program is global, each region has also tailored a local offering to resonate with their unique music culture and audience. Each market will support local artists based on their needs and expertise, all under Spotify’s emerging artist umbrella: RADAR.

With the release of POWER HOUSE and the singles that preceded it, Magi Merlin garnered praise from BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio 1, Clash, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, KCRW, KEXP, Wonderland, Glamcult (of which she was the cover star in June), Libération, France Inter, Radio France, CBC, Radio-Canada, Le Devoir, Exclaim!, and many others. The record has spent the last number of weeks in NACC Canada's Top 10 chart, and album single WHIP has been climbing up the CBC Music Top 20, currently sitting at #13.

Released digitally on all music services on July 10th, POWER HOUSE is available on vinyl starting today, August 28th. Limited editions can be purchased on Bonsound’s web store (Lavender Edition) and via Bandcamp (Green Edition).

After a memorable show at the legendary Rock en Seine festival in Paris earlier this week, Magi Merlin will perform at Les Foufounes Électriques in Montreal on September 17th and at the Adelaide Hall in Toronto on October 14th. Headline shows are also planned in London, New York City and Chicago later this fall. Check out the list below for all tour dates.

About POWER HOUSE

Written from her bisexual/ENM perspective and her broader experience of existing as a woman in systems designed to flatten her, the album navigates the contradictions of seeking validation in both platonic and romantic contexts, deconstructing the "plastic confidence" we're taught to wear. Merlin operates as co-producer and creative director, ensuring the visual world mirrors the music's refusal to soften. It's designed as a ‘living universe’ where every element, from sound to image to performance, is intentional and self-defined. This is her philosophy: real change starts small but sounds immense.

Throughout POWER HOUSE, Magi refuses to be flattened. She buries self-kindness under distorted synth. She won't resolve tension into a chorus. The armour she wears is declaration, not defence. Her music splinters—jungle breaks bleeding into futuristic synths, '90s house fractured by raw vocals. Her visual world is industrial, deliberate, refusing the consistency that makes things recognizable. She operates entirely outside of categories, including the alternative ones. POWER HOUSE is what it sounds like when someone refuses every uniform.

About Magi Merlin

There's a special kind of kindred spirit that Magi Merlin makes music for; her fellow obsessives. Magi (pronounced Mahd-j-eye) sings directly to the listener, face pressed up against the other side of the screen's glass. Through her propulsive, avant-garde form of pop and "Broken” R&B, she explores life's deep existential truths, tearing through imagination and genre like outfits ripped off a garment rack. Whether that be a Galliano tulle skirt for a quick studio session, lace wrist cuffs on a first date, or jungle-inspired splintered kick drums giving way to futuristic synth lines.

Over the last years, she has written and co-composed largely alongside Funkywhat, a collaborator with whom she has built a shared musical language. Magi’s alternative forms of pop and R&B are about as high-definition as one can imagine, without sacrificing sensuousness and emotion. Her 2022 EP Gone Girl is music that feels alive, animated by a voice that blends unruly maximalism and earned wisdom. It sent her on tour with Noga Erez and on an electric performance in Mexico City in support of Omar Apollo. A surprise EP in 2025, A Weird Little Dog, brought a deepened emphasis to her experimental style and gave rise to “Broken R&B”, a genre she named and owns entirely, less a marketing category than an honest account of how she works, her art direction and visual world as idiosyncratic and charged as the music itself. Soon after, she opened for Nubya Garcia across the US, with festival appearances at Osheaga, Festival d'été de Québec, where she opened for Ty Dolla $ign, and most recently a European support run with Yaya Bey. Outside of music, she made her acting debut in 2026 with Chandler Levack's Mile End Kicks, alongside Barbie Ferreira, Devon Bostick, and Juliette Gariépy, which screened at TIFF and SXSW.

Follow Magi Merlin: Instagram / TikTok / YouTube / Bandcamp

Tour dates