My Polaris Music Prize short list

I'm a little late to this (I've just finished university FOREVER, so I've been rather busy 'living up' the remaining student days whilst they lasted) but a little more than a week ago the long list for the Polaris Music Prize was announced (which you can find at a very cool website http://polarismusicprize.ca/ - why exactly they went for a robot theme, I too am not entirely sure). If you're not sure what the Polaris Music Prize is, it's basically the Canadian version of our Mercury Prize (hoping, of course, that given you are reading a predominantly music based blog you'll know what the Mercury Prize is). I know, I hear you. "Canadian?!", I hear you ask, "Who cares about Canada?". I appreciate that Canada tends to get a lot thrown at it, but I firmly believe a good 99% of it is unnecessary (why the remaining 1% is necessary you only need to go to the fourth word of this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickelback to find out). Of course I joke (although admittedly I'm hardly going to say Nickelback are my favourite band of all time any time soon), but I feel Nickelback bashing has some parallels with Canada bashing - it seems that once upon time Nickelback/Canada were used as a scapegoat and what feels like everybody jumped on the bandwagon and simply haven't looked back since. When you come to think of it, though, it's hardly fair, is it? I just so happen to go against the grain and regard Canada very highly, both as a country and a producer of music; I spent an academic year at the University of Calgary and enjoyed every minute of it - some of their countryside (that is, of course, if you can still classify scenes like this (http://blog.cellep.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/the-rocky-mountains.jpg) as 'countryside') really is beautiful (trust me when I say you need to see it for your own eyes to really get what it's all about). And my surname's Beaver (handy) so my classmates over there were always going to have a natural inclination to like me, which I'm sure helped matters somewhat. Whilst I was over there, and as weird as this might sound, I also had a great time musically. For one, I met a girl from Leeds over there who had a very similar music taste to me (meaning I was introduced to a bunch of artists and bands who I now can't imagine living without), which is always nice (I am still very good friends with her almost two years later - coincidence?), and for another, Canada supplied me with one of my favourite gigs by one of my now favourite artists; the artist was, and still is, a man who goes by the name of Dan Mangan and the gig took place on a cold, snowy evening inside a big church. Warning: a sentence pretty much entirely made out of cliches incoming. Soft indie-folk on a crisp, cold Winter's evening, Tim Horton's in hand, inside a venue with acoustics from Heaven. Just perfect. As if to make use of the amazing acoustics availaible for all their worth, Mr. Mangan even finished with an entirely unplugged, a cappella version of this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwwfJ-oNMVs), using the couple hundred of us (the audience) as backing vocals - as cringeworthy as it is for me to say this, it really did provide me with a musical moment I'll (probably) never forget.
But onto the main purpose of this post! Although the official short list of the Polaris Music Prize isn't to be unveiled for a while yet (not until July 17th, anyway), I had a look at the artists and bands which made the long list and picked out the ones I liked - this post isn't about the ones who I think will win, it's about the ones who I personally liked. Once the shortlist is unveiled, I'll do a review of the album by the artist/band who I think will win (rather than who I think deserves to win), and, if my prediction is wrong, I'll review the album that wins. Which is annoying because it feels like I am the only person IN THE ENTIRE WORLD who doesn't really rate Grimes.
In no particular order, here's my short list. In brackets is a YouTube link to (in most cases) a fairly recent song that I feel represents the respective artist/band quite nicely. Yes, they might all be Canadian but there's some really good music here nonetheless (it'll be worth powering on through, I promise); some, if not most, of which I hadn't even heard of before I took many a musical adventure on YouTube prompted by the releasing of the long list, so do please take at least a quick look at all of them. And most importantly, enjoy!

Dan Mangan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzawkvDmERA)
Rich Aucoin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkuWgXhzxg4)
Bahamas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A65BbJMCyA4)
Mark Davis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJmfBrtc5gY)
Great Lake Swimmers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doK3qHLyRsI&feature=plcp)
Sandro Perri (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7AC3FgI1Aw)
Joel Plaskett Emergency (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnb4SmSafQ)
PS I Love You (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHAOBhg9Ybo)
Bry Webb (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kG5JoKSnpc)
Yukon Blonde (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBA0f2lSB64)
The Barr Brothers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JU4T9iqNTo)
Parlovr (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liiCvzRpU1w)
Cadence Weapon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74cyPQkSQ6s)

More on this when the short list is unveiled on July 17th.