The blueprint for Neon Dreams’ music is simple. “A well-told story, a beautiful

melody and some emotional chords are what we aim for. The genre doesn’t matter to us as long as it makes people feel something,” explains frontman Frank Kadillac.

They have rapidly emerged as one of the brightest new stars on the Canadian music horizon but their success story has long and deep roots. Frank Kadillac, Adrian Morris, and Matt Gats have been playing together the last nine years resulting in a tight-knit band with a strong personal and musical foundation.

Elijah Woods x Jamie Fine is a Canadian electropop duo consisting of songwriter and producer Elijah Woods and singer-songwriter Jamie Fine. The pair met in Ottawa in 2014 and began independently producing music together shortly thereafter. In September 2017, the duo competed on the first season of Canadian reality music competition, The Launch, and released the single "Ain't Easy" through Big Machine Records in January 2018 following the initial airing of their episode. "Ain't Easy" has since been certified Platinum by Music Canada and topped the national adult contemporary airplay chart.

Derik John Baker, known as Virginia to Vegas, is an American-born Canadian singer and songwriter. He is based in Toronto. He is best known for his gold and platinum-certified singles, "We Are Stars", Lights Out & Selfish released through Wax Records. His debut studio album, Utopian, was released in December 2016.

Jocelyn Alice is a Canadian singer and songwriter. Formerly one half of Canadian indie soul pop duo jocelyn & lisa from Calgary, Alberta, Alice began performing as a solo artist in 2015. Her debut single, the 2015 summer hit ‘Jackpot’, was certified Platinum in Canada in September 2016 and reached the top 15 on multiple Canadian commercial radio charts. Alice's second single, 'Feels Right', was certified Gold in Canada in February 2018.
Alice received Canadian Radio Music Awards nominations in 2016 for Best New Group or Solo Artist: AC and Best New Group or Solo Artist: CHR. She also received Canadian Music Week Indie Awards nominations in 2016 for Pop Artist of the Year and Single of the Year.

Born and raised in Vancouver, Shawn started his musical journey as an emotive, soulful singer. With an innate talent for music, he picked up piano, guitar, bass and trombone as well. Shawn’s music showcases his heartfelt sensibility for writing songs that the reveal poignant complexities of heartbreak and relationships. His live performances are equally as impressive, showing his impressive depth and vocal range. So impressive, that Hook was nominated for a Juno Award as a Breakthrough Artist. With all this talent, and model good looks, soon everyone will be hooked on Shawn.

Dan Talevski is a Canadian singer-songwriter from Georgetown, Ontario. His career first began as an online YouTube sensation in 2007 posting covers of popular songs. Since then he has gone on to work with will.i.am, Soulja Boy, Shawn Desman, Keisha Chante, Timbaland, Tyler Shaw and was selected as direct support for Backstreet Boys on its 2010 This Is Us Tour. His latest single, "The Wire", was released June 15, 2018.

Ria MacNutt, known professionally as Ria Mae, is a Canadian singer and songwriter from Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“I want to make music that’s good and makes people think and want to dance and feel things and give them value. I want people to know that they are important and that they have valuable and important things to say. Everybody is free to express themselves.” – Scott Helman

It sometimes feels that in the cut and paste pop world we live in, the art of the song is lost in a swirl of synthesizers and auto-tuned production tricks. But, thankfully, there are a few young artists out there whose goal it is to come to the table with something to say and create a unique voice for themselves. Rather than allowing radio formats and flavour-of-the-month styles dictate who Scott Helman is, it is his deft pen and soulful voice that defines his sound.

Born and raised in Toronto, Scott’s parents filled the house with music but it was a steady diet of 80’s pop that didn’t really connect with him. It wasn’t until one rainy day at a friend’s cottage that Scott had the musical epiphany that set him on his way.

“I’d heard a lot of music already, but I’d never listened to The Dark Side of The Moon by Pink Floyd,” says Scott reminiscing about that seminal moment. “We stole a couple cigarettes from his mom and found the album in his dad’s vinyl collection. I remember just staring at the cover. From the moment it started we were speechless. I was amazed at how moved I was by the lyrics. I remember thinking, ‘I want to spend the rest of my life trying to make something half as good as this.’ It was kind of a crazy moment.”

From that moment on Scott became a sponge going back and listening to everything that had only been referenced before – the Beatles, Dylan, Young and on and on. He learned how to play guitar and he started writing songs, trying to find his own voice. For his birthday, a friend bought him some time in a studio to record a couple of demos. Terry Mosenberg, who was to become Scott’s manager, arranged the studio time, loved what he heard and encouraged Scott to write and record some more songs. Those demos led Scott to a performance in the offices at Warner Music Canada where, sitting on a stool with his guitar in his lap, he filled the room with a voice that stunned all that were there.

Encouraged by Ron Lopata, Warner’s VP of A&R, Scott went on a writing spree that produced a plethora of songs that began to define a sound that he could call his own.

“When I would say ‘I don’t know, I’m not comfortable or it’s not me,’” says Scott, “Ron would say just trust me and do it and you can tell me if you don’t like it after. At first I would go home and think, I don’t know about this and then after a week, I’d go ‘this song rocks.’”

“I think the reason some people can find pop music boring is that they think that one song serves one purpose. Sometimes you want to kick people in the ass a little bit. A song like “Cry Cry Cry” is about a relationship but not everything is good and the bridge reflects the other side so there had to be distortion on that guitar. I think it’s important to keep people interested and to keep the world of music an interesting thing.”

Scott continued to develop his craft even as he recorded. Producers such as Tawgs Salter and songwriter Simon Wilcox helped push Scott discover new sounds and ideas locked up inside, allowing him to bloom as an artist.

“Writing songs is like trying to figure out how to put a puzzle together. You struggle to put the pieces together and then you find the one piece that seems to make sense of everything else. Lyrically, the songwriters I worked with were an inspiration. Simon Wilcox was amazing. I don’t know how she does it every day,” marvels Scott.

“There are some songs you write because you want to write a song and there are some songs you write because you have to write a song. “Somewhere Sweet” wasn’t me trying to craft a song. I had come home from work, having just been fired. I hated my job and needed to escape everything and just wrote this really nice song.”

In the midst of writing and recording, Scott started to assemble a band so that he could start trying out the new songs on stage. His first recruits were two old high school friends, guitarist Callum Maudsley and drummer Julian Psihogios.

“This kid we knew had a whole stereo system and a situation going on with mics in his garage,” recalls Scott. “He didn’t play anything but he was super emphatic about music and that he could record it. So we all went over to his house one day to play music. There were some other players there that were really good but I noticed that Julian and Callum were just exceptional and I made a note in my brain that I want to make music with these guys.”

Julian had played with bassist Taylor Everard and so he became a natural fit to join the band. Rounding out the group is keyboardist Ezra Jordan who comes with his own musical legacy as the son of songwriters Marc Jordan and Amy Sky. Once the band was together, they wasted no time in getting their sound together and stretching out Scott’s songs on stage where he proved himself to be a naturally dynamic performer.

“There are a lot of great artists that are really honest with their audience. Regardless of whether or not I like them, I respect them and that is what I am striving for. I want people to know that I am honest with what I am saying. I want people to enjoy my music as much as I do.”

Jillea has 22 tattoos, 11 piercings and black hair but the music she produces isn’t roll-in-the-glass punk rock or head-banging hard rock. The 21-year-old small town gal with the city edge only stomps on clichés and stereotypes. She creates an urban-tinged pop that has a gentleness and vulnerability with a killer emotive voice.

“It’s my favourite thing…for people to look at me and hear the acoustic version of ‘Bottles,’ which is the most beautiful piano-vocal ever and they’re like, ‘Did that come from you?’ ‘Yeah it did.’”

Jillea — who won Slaight Music’s 2013 It’s Your Shot songwriting and artist development competition with her heart-wrenching rhythmic-ballad “Shattered” — is now in Toronto co-writing an EP with Adam Alexander (Shawn Desman, Mia Martina) and New Royale’s Liz Rodrigues (Eminem, Dr Dre, Pink) and recording it with Alexander and co-producer Andrew “Marty” Martino of Down With Webster.

“We all work so well together; I haven’t even stepped outside of that circle,” says Jillea.

The feisty tell-off “Miss America” is what Jillea stands for, a lyric that declares she’s not a covergirl that can be changed and molded, while in the string-enforced “Goddess” she demands to be treated well. It’s something different for the girl who says she always comes in second place in love, losing out to someone else, which is the subject of “Shattered.”

“I like to show every side of me in my music,” Jillea explains. “So there is a confident side, a cockiness, just as there is to everybody and that comes through in ‘Goddess,’ but some of my songs are more emotional and vulnerable. When someone listens to my album, I want to hit every feeling that they might have.”

Jillea had only just relocated to Toronto, living out of boxes, when she began writing these songs. She grew up in Quispamsis, New Brunswick, a town of 18,000, just outside Saint John on the East Coast of Canada, with “lots of water and trees and nature,” she says. But she always felt big city, just like her mom, a successful (and tattooed) interior designer, whose own mom had put her on a bus at age 16 to a bigger city to pursue her dreams.

Jillea knew she could sing at age 3. Her mother tells her she tearfully confessed one day, expecting to get in trouble because she had said she was in her room playing with Barbie dolls when really she was singing. “I don’t want you to be mad at me, but I can sing. I can really sing,” the little girl had said. Her uncle also recalled that at 5 she would sing nursery rhymes in perfect key.

“He always told my mom, ‘She’s gonna be a singer.’ So it never left my head,” says Jillea.

“But where I’m from, everyone’s first reaction to having big dreams is ‘No.’ Everything is ‘No, no, no. You can’t do that.’ “Because of the type of music that I sing — R&B, pop alternative — it was very foreign. It was like I was an alien to everybody back home. All my friends’ parents thought I was nuts because I dropped out of university when I won the contest and moved to Toronto.”

It’s Your Shot was the first contest Jillea ever won. “Even back home doing St. John Idol on the boardwalk on Tuesday nights, I never even won any of that shit ever. Ever,” she says.

Now, she’s validated — and big city. And hearing yes, yes, yes!

“To me, the most charming thing about music is when you see something or hear something unexpected,” Jillea says. “I love the fact that my image and my sound don’t make sense because it makes people question what does make sense and then it tests the boundaries of what’s acceptable.

“I don’t like being predictable. I love the unexpected. I love when people look at someone and are like, ‘Why are they that way?’ That’s when my job is done. That’s exactly what I want people to be like – ‘Who is Jillea?’ That is the point of what I do.”

Tyler Shaw is a Canadian singer and the winner of the "MuchMusic Coca-Cola Covers Contest 2012" organized by the specialized Canadian music cable channel Much. He rose to fame through the contest and subsequently released his debut single, "Kiss Goodnight", through Sony Music Canada in December 2012. The song was certified Gold by Music Canada in April 2013. Shaw's debut studio album, Yesterday, was released on September 4, 2015.

The spellbinding chemistry of Port Cities is built on masterful songwriting, skillfully crafted arrangements, and the powerful electricity between the three voices at its helm. The band surfaced as a result of genuine connection and a profound shared belief in the music they make together; it’s soulful and vibrant — commanding, organic pop melodies buoyed by stunning three-part harmonies. Coupled with their engaging camaraderie onstage and off, Port Cities have become a not-to-be-missed live experience.

The trio—Carleton Stone, Breagh Mackinnon, and Dylan Guthro—began writing together in 2011 amidst the breathtaking edge-of-the-world landscapes of Cape Breton Island. They formed a strong musical connection as each of them were releasing award-winning albums and touring solo careers, but soon their creative success started to demand more ongoing collaboration.

Each of the three songwriters brings distinct strengths to Port Cities, creating heart-wrenching songs reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac and Crosby Stills & Nash. The quality of their music should come as no shock: between them, they’ve recorded six solo albums and have collaborated with the likes of JUNO award-winning duo Classified and David Myles, Hawksley Workman (Tegan and Sara, Serena Ryder), Howie Beck (Feist, Hayden), and acclaimed singer-songwriter/Broken Social Scene alum Jason Collett.

The band worked with mentor and friend Gordie Sampson (Carrie Underwood, LeAnn Rhymes, Rascal Flatts), writing and recording their staggering debut—a multi-layered pop opus dense with biting guitar, swells of synth, and irresistible beats. While the production is spirited and contemporary, it’s easy to hear the long-standing tradition of songcraft and folk music behind each radiant chorus, dazzling hook, and driving instrumentation.

Throughout the entire record and at every show —whether it be in a raw crash of rock n’ roll or a devastating, gentle acoustic number—the strength of Port Cities lies clearly in the riveting force of Stone, Mackinnon, and Guthro’s passionate voices.