Best Female Solo Artist

She kicked your ass as half of Indigo Girls-esque duo Stumble back in the day, piercing Halifax’s power-pop-quartet tendencies with three killer albums (Take Me Apart, The Fall Sessions and the unreleased Down Again). And these days Campbell has struck out on her own. She’s a skillful dispenser of the finest in raw, emotional, guitar-led songs. But eclecticism has its place in Campbell’s music too: In 2001, Ottawa’s Rock City Women’s Fest billed her as “alternative jazz/blues fusion.” Either way, Campbell wins the lion’s share of Reverb Readers’ Poll votes for her tunes. And hey—if the fact that she’s production manager here at The Coast had anything to do with her win, she would have picked up the prize last year. So enough already with the conspiracy theories. Runner-up: Amelia Curran