Female voices including Carly Rae Jepsen, Grimes lead Polaris Music Prize nominees

A lineup of prominent female voices including pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen and electronic songstress Grimes are vying for this year's Polaris Music Prize.

Both Jepsen's Emotion and Grimes' Art Angels were on the short list revealed Thursday for best album of the year from a Canadian artist. Women played a prominent role in six of the 10 nominated projects.

• Meet the 10 artists on the 2016 Polaris Prize short list

Many of the albums that didn't make the cut also happened to be some of last year's biggest sellers. Releases from Justin Bieber, Drake and the Weeknd were all part of the Polaris long list revealed in June, but were eliminated from contention.

Among the other women nominated are Basia Bulat for Good Advice, Jessy Lanza for Oh No, and female-led groups U.S. Girls for Half Free, and White Lung for Paradise.

Bulat's nomination marks the third time she's been a finalist for the Polaris prize, putting her among an exclusive club of Canadians that include Caribou, Drake, Metric, Owen Pallett and Shad.

Jepsen's album was her followup to the breakout success Kiss, which was buoyed by the massive hit Call Me Maybe. While Emotion failed to deliver the sales of its predecessor, it was embraced by several music critics who called it one of the best albums of 2015.

Rounding out this year's short list are Black Mountain's IV, Pup's The Dream Is Over, Andy Shauf's The Party and rising producer Kaytranada's 99.9%

• B.C. women leading the charge for 2016 Polaris Prize
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Kaytranada, who is based in Montreal, began his career as Kaytradamus and has slowly built a reputation in the hip hop community. His album includes appearances from a number of underground artists like Anderson Paak, Little Dragon and U.K. singer Craig David.

The Polaris Music Prize is awarded to the artist or group that created the best Canadian album of the previous year, irrespective of genre or sales. The winner is chosen by a panel of journalists, broadcasters and bloggers.

Nominees were whittled down from a longer list of 40 albums revealed a month ago — a list that itself was narrowed from 183 qualifying albums.

The winner will be awarded $50,000 on Sept. 19 at a gala presentation held at Toronto's Carlu.

A webcast will be hosted by CBC Music and Aux.tv.

Last year, folk icon Buffy Sainte-Marie's album Power in the Blood won the prize.

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