Had a great chat with Owen Pallett, the violinist who performs complex pop music infused with orchestral arrangements under the name Final Fantasy. Pallett won the first-ever Polaris Music Prize last year, for the best Canadian album based on artistic merit.

Pallett was a dark horse, as he was shortlisted with the likes of Broken Social Scene, Cadence Weapon, the Deadly Snakes, Sarah Harmer, K’naan, Malajube, Metric, The New Pornographers, and Wolf Parade.

I first heard Final Fantasy while listening to the excellent CBC Radio 3 podcast hosted by Grant Lawrence.

The fact that Pallett named his band after the video-game, Final Fantasy, gave me the excuse I needed to combine my love of video-games and Canadian independent music into a column. Catch my conversation with Pallett in this week’s Trigger Happy column, over here.

Also in this week’s Georgia Straight are my capsule reviews of Viva Pinata and Tony Hawk’s Project 8.