Emily Haines

About Emily Haines

Emily Savitri Haines (born January 25, 1974) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, keyboardist, and guitarist. She is the lead singer, keyboardist, and principal songwriter of the rock band Metric and a member of the musical collective Broken Social Scene. As a solo artist, she has performed under her own name and as Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton. Born in New Delhi and raised in Ontario, Haines grew up in an artistic household as the daughter of poet and jazz lyricist Paul Haines and attended Toronto’s Etobicoke School of the Arts, where she met future Broken Social Scene collaborators Kevin Drew and Amy Millan.

Haines formed the nucleus of Metric with guitarist James Shaw in Toronto in the late 1990s. The band developed into one of Canada’s most enduring alternative-rock acts, with albums including Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, Live It Out, Fantasies, Synthetica, Art of Doubt, the two-part Formentera project, and 2026’s Romanticize the Dive. Fantasies, featuring songs such as “Help I’m Alive” and “Gimme Sympathy,” won the 2010 Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year, while Metric was named Group of the Year.

Away from Metric’s more energetic rock and electronic sound, Haines has pursued quieter, piano-centered material through her solo work. She released Cut in Half and Also Double under her own name in 1996, followed by Knives Don’t Have Your Back and What Is Free to a Good Home? with The Soft Skeleton, and returned to the project with Choir of the Mind in 2017. Her work across Metric, Broken Social Scene, and her solo recordings has established her as a distinctive songwriter and vocalist within Canadian alternative and indie music.