Alex Winston

Cute female indie-pop has all but become a genre in its own right. After Feist blazed the trail, a slew of artists, including Canadian favs like Hannah Georgas and Rebekah Higgs, followed in her wake. The early singles released by Brooklynite Alex Winston implied that she had just enough originality to step ahead of the pack, but last year's Sister Wife "mini-album" hinted that those early tunes might have been the best she had. Ditto for King Con, her debut proper. Her voice, a pepped up version of the Knife/Fever Ray singer Karin Dreijer Andersson's, is as strong as ever and is well suited to the spritely pace of these dozen tracks. But half of these numbers, including "Choice Notes," "Medicine" and "Velvet Elvis," have already appeared as singles, EPs or B-sides. What's more, those six songs are also the best. Late cuts "Run Rumspringa" and "The Fold" aren't bad, but mid-record momentum killers "Host" and "Guts" are. Alex Winston is capable of writing some excellent indie-pop gems, she just hasn't figured out to do it with consistency.