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The last time Nova Scotia native Baby Nova attended the Osheaga Music Festival in Montreal about a decade ago, she was in the crowd.
On Saturday, she’ll return to one of Canada’s largest music festivals as a performer on the main stage.
“That was my first festival experience … so I’m very excited to go back and I’m very excited to play it,” she said. “I’m just also very scared and I just want to do a good job and I want it to go well.”
The Halifax-raised, Los Angeles-based indie-pop musician released her debut album, Shhugar, this year to widespread acclaim. It was longlisted for Canada’s Polaris Music Prize.
She was named to Spotify’s Artists to Watch list for 2026 and recently performed at Rolling Stone Canada’s Future of Music showcase.
She’s also playing upcoming concerts at the Fono Festival in Quebec City and the Sommo Festival in P.E.I.
While it might seem her career came out of nowhere, she’s quietly spent nearly two decades preparing for this moment — even if the confidence to pursue a music career was rooted in what she calls a scam.
The television series Hannah Montana ran from 2006 to 2011 and told the story of a teenager living a double life as a pop star.
When Nova was 11, self-proclaimed talent scouts came searching for the next Hannah Montana and held auditions.
“And they would send you to summer camp if they thought you were talented or … they would send everyone as … they just wanted money,” said Nova, now 28.
“So I ended up going to this summer camp and that was, like, enough false confidence for me to feel like they thought that there was something special in me.”
After the camp in Halifax, Nova started writing songs in the style of Hannah Montana.
Nova said her mom recently showed her a binder filled with about 300 songs that she’d written before age 16. Looking back, Nova calls the songs terrible, but the passion was there.
WATCH | Baby Nova’s Too Pretty for Buffalo:
“I think sometimes you just stumble on something in life that you’re passionate about and you just become obsessed with it,” she said. “And that is like the end of that and you’re just, like, ‘I’m just going to do this forever.’ So I think that’s what happened for me.”
At 17, she landed a publishing deal to write songs for other artists. Working alongside other songwriters helped elevate her craft.
Chasing the dream
Nova left Halifax for Montreal after completing high school. Over the past decade, the self-described “professional couch-surfer” has called Montreal, Toronto, New York and Los Angeles home while chasing a career in music.
It’s a career that, just a couple of years ago, she came close to leaving.
“I was kind of at the end of my rope financially, mentally, everything,” said Nova, noting she moved to Los Angeles with $500.
Down to her final dollars about two years ago, she had a meeting with an artist and repertoire (A&R) representative. While the discussion centred on writing for other artists, the representative asked if Nova had recorded any of her own music.
Nova played a few tracks, and the representative invited her to a followup meeting.
The meeting was in Beverly Hills. Unable to afford an Uber, Nova walked for a couple of hours from Hollywood to get there. Sweaty, hungry and a bit sassy, she was informally offered a deal that day.
“That sticks with me, that experience because now whenever I feel like I’m approaching like burnout or whatever, I’m like, ‘If I just push it that extra little tiny bit, I feel like something will happen,’ so that’s kind of what keeps me going, I think, a lot of the time,” said Nova.
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