Leslie Feist is remarkably down to earth for a woman who recently attended the 50th Grammy Awards as a four-time nominee, and in the past year has seen 1234, the song she co-wrote with Sally Seltmann of New Buffalo, become the soundtrack for Apple’s iPod Nano ad.

On paper, her world changed: When the ad was first screened, Feist - the name she goes under when playing solo, as distinct from the other part of her career as a member of the brilliant Canadian indie supergroup and musical collective, Broken Social Scene, had just released her fourth solo album, The Reminder - a lovely, eclectic, smart collection of songs that combines sheer simplicity with sublime atmospheres, rich melodies and, at times, unusual rhythms. Drawing on chamber pop, post-modern folk and classic 1960s singer/songwriters, her work is cool and refreshing. 1234 is a perfect example.

Prior to the advertisment screening, The Reminder was selling about 6000 copies a week and 1234 about 2000 downloads a week. Following the commercial’s debut, the album jumped from No. 36 to No. 28 on the Billboard 200. 1234 reached No. 7 on the Hot Digital Songs chart and No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the UK it originally charted at 102; post-ad it also soared to No. 8. Time magazine, as venerable a publication as you can get, slotted 1234 in at No. 2 on its The 10 Best Songs of 2007 list. More was to follow. Feist was photographed by the legendary Annie Liebowitz for the November 2007 issue of Vanity Fair for a photo essay on folk music that also included Joni Mitchell, The Guthrie Family and Peter, Paul and Mary. To cap things off she was then nominated in four Grammy Award categories: Best Female Pop Vocal, Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Album (for the reminder), and Best Short Form Music Video (for 1234). Feist also performed 1234 on the Awards’ show.

Not that she is a stranger to awards. Feist is a four-time Juno award-winner (Canada’s music awards) and recently won the Seventh Annual Shortlist Music Prize for The Reminder.
But, at 32, she is no newcomer to the scene. Born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, the Canadian’s career began in 1991 when at the somewhat tender age of 15 she fronted Calgary punk band, Placebo. Soon after she met Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning at a festival. A decade later they invited her to join them in the just formed Broken Social Scene. It is an understatement to say that she is a key figure in the Canadian indie scene alongside luminaries such as Arcade Fire.

But nothing could really prepare her for the whirlwind that followed 1234.

It’s taken nearly 30 minutes to find her for this interview. It’s well past 11pm in Vancouver and Feist is actually in the airport terminal preparing to board a plane to fly to Sydney where she will embark on the Laneway Festival as both a solo artist and a member of Broken Social Scene, who are also on the bill.

“It could have been a strange world I found myself in,” she says, “but to be honest it’s been very recognisable because my world has stayed constant in the sense that I travel with the same people all the time when I’m on the road and I’ve been on the road a lot.

“I guess the eye of the storm becomes even more calm as the storm gets crazier.”

The 50th Annual Grammy Awards was a different story. Multiple award-winning Kanye West was so impressed he put a video of her performance up on his blog.

“It was a night for the history books,” Feist says. “It was bizarre and huge and strange and I got out of there as fast as I could. It was very amped up and I needed to get up and cut out of there.”

And Kanye? Okay, it’s a gentle tease …

“I hung out with him for a while, talking about making videos and mutual friends. There’s nothing to it . You meet people and start talking. Just like how I’m about to meet whoever I’m sitting next to on the plane to Australia. And I’ll probably end up talking to them.”

1… 2 … 3… 4… let’s talk about Sally Seltmann and the song that’s caused all the fuss. Feist laughs. She really is very easy to get on with. “Sally was signed to my label in Canada. I heard her first album and asked to come and tour Canada with me. We had quite a lot of time on that tour to just hang out, eat bad food and listen to each other’s songs. At the end of the tour she came up to me in her quiet way, said she had written a song and played me the roots of what would become 1234.

“After about six months of playing around with it, I rang her and asked whether she would mind me changing some lyrics. I also changed the tempo a bit. Funnily enough, the version I did on the Grammys was closer to Sally’s original version though.

“Her new record, Somewhere, Anywhere, is just phenomenal. I just can’t stop listening to it … it’s amazing. Sally is remarkable. When she was opening for me I was still playing bars and even with a band you have to just hang in there sometimes. She would get up there with only her Wurlitzer so it would be really tough for her. When you are playing solo in venues like that you need people to co-operate because you want to try and be intimate and not end up screaming to make yourself heard. And often people don’t cooperate.”

Feist understands all about the pressures - and importance - of cutting it live. Apart from being an accomplished solo musician and a group member, she was also the notorious Bitch Lap Lap, a character who could be seen working the back of the stage with a sock puppet at shows by electro-punk, Peaches, in the late ’90s. They met when they became roommates in Toronto in 1999. The point is she’s seen it from most angles. Nearly a decade later, Peaches swings in and out of view, but Feist is in the ascendent. Not for long. She’s about to turn her career around again. This year, the focus may well be on Broken Social Scene which hasn’t released an album since 2005’s excellent self-titled set.

“Broken has a family reunion at the end of March. We’re going to hide out at a beach in Mexico and try and write a new record. It’s the first time we’ve all been together in years so that will be my focus. And I’m in no rush to put out another Feist record. The last two, Open Season and The Reminder, came out back to back, virtually a year apart. I need to take a breather to get into my place again.”

Wherever that is and what it will bring she honestly doesn’t know. However, when asked whether fame and time have changed her ambitions, she replies - as she walks from one boarding gate to another … she nearly got on a flight to Toronto - that she would just like to write another album full songs that she’s proud of, and then another album full songs she’s proud of. “Anything beyond that and you are lost,” Feist says. “It is my humble ambition to write a great song in the next couple of months.” And with that she finds the right gateway and boards her flight to Australia.