Nemahsis Previews New Album, Reflects on Shared Otherness Ahead of NXNE Set

Nemahsis will perform at the SPIN Canada launch during NXNE on Sunday, June 14, at the W Hotel’s SOUNDSTAGE in Toronto. The appearance follows a breakthrough year: her 2024 debut Verbathim earned the Palestinian-Canadian singer Breakthrough Artist and Alternative Album of the Year at the 2025 JUNO Awards, where she set a record with three nominations as an emerging artist.

A new album is planned for the fall, and Nemahsis’s songwriting has already shifted. “I write entirely differently now,” she told SPIN in a recent cover interview. “I don’t think I’m able to write ‘you/me’ anymore; now I write very ‘we.’” Her intimate, personal songs about isolation—originally born from growing up a Muslim girl in mostly white Milton, Ontario—have connected unexpectedly across communities, especially among LGBTQ+ audiences who see their own experiences of otherness reflected in her work.

That resonance has reached high places. Stevie Wonder attended her first-ever Los Angeles show in 2023 and returned backstage to praise “what if i took it off for you?”—a song about removing her hijab and the layers of identity it represents—and they’ve remained in contact. On Verbathim, tracks like “coloured concrete” and “i wanna be your right hand” channel a gentle but firm voice through melodies that recall Kate Bush, Sarah Harmer, and Feist without settling into imitation. Nemahsis doesn’t rely on volume to disrupt; she rewrites the language of belonging one quiet, precise song at a time.