Begonia (Alexa Dirks) returns to announce Powder Blue, the follow up to 2019’s Fear, which was nominated for both the Polaris Music Prize and a JUNO Award. On the album’s name, Dirks says, “Powder Blue is more of an emotion. It makes me think of my baby blanket, the colour of the virgin mary’s shawl at the church Christmas play, the airiness of clouds on a summer day, chlorine filled water in a hotel pool, Elvis in the 70s wearing an ill-fitting jumpsuit, the wallpaper in my room growing up, the collection of faded denim jackets in my basement.”

“The name of this album needed to be something that encompasses all of the feelings that these songs give me when they are put together,” Dirks continues. “When I listen to them as a unit, they send me back to the words, the colour. To me, this album holds a muted nostalgia, musings on childhood, the complexities of new love, self love, religion, virginity, and sexuality. There’s an indulgence in emotional depth and pain yet also an indulgence in love and a poppy lightness—two sides I’ve always tried to balance. I feel like I let my guard down even more with this record and decided to not hold back on either end.”

As Begonia, Alexa Dirks is bold, brazen with her florid, surprising pop that is tempered with sensitivity and wisdom. In her music, Begonia leans hard into a sense of arrival. Whether it’s learning to come into her own or processing a brutal heartbreak, Dirks’ intimate lyrics and audacious sound allows for her audience to relate to the messiness of life with an honesty that is refreshing.

Her debut LP, Fear, was nominated for a JUNO Award for Adult Alternative Album Of The Year and was longlisted for The Polaris Music Prize. It was one of Exclaim!’s Most Underrated Albums of the Year, made end of the year lists from CBC Music and Dominionated, and saw both “Beats” and “Hanging On A Line” named as CBC Music Top 20 Fan Favourites of the year. Fear also spent 10 straight weeks as the #1 album in Canada on Earshot’s Top 50 chart.

Fear was written and co-produced with a familiar team of Matt Schellenberg (Royal Canoe) and Matt Peters (Royal Canoe) along with Marcus Paquin (The National, Julia Jacklin, The Weather Station).

Dirks' first solo EP, Lady in Mind, was well-received, being listed on NPR’s 10 Artists You Need To Know in 2017 and single “Juniper” reached #1 on the CBC Radio 2 Top 20. Noisey wrote that, “Begonia has one of Canada’s most extraordinary voices, and thankfully she uses it to obliterate the misery from this world one live performance at a time.” NPR wrote that Begonia is “the place where synth-pop meets old soul and scrappy meets sexy."