ABOUT

19-year-old Amy Kisser’s voice is nothing less than massive. Loud and passionate, the Calgary-born, Toronto-based rock artist bears her soul to the world with a burning, emotive honesty that screams out for the voices unheard. With a piercing vocal range encompassing rumbling lows all the way to whistle notes, she is the definition of unexpected, both live and on record. 

With an incredibly diverse palette of influences that range from Chris Cornell and Breaking Benjamin to Halsey and Taylor Swift, Amy’s sound is hard to tag with a neat little label. But if you need a comparison, think Evanescence meets Taylor Swift. As a songwriter, Amy has been writing lyrics for years, but it wasn’t until she began studying music full-time at Toronto Metropolitan University as one of 50 students admitted into the inaugural year of their brand-new Professional Music program that she started creating full songs as a form of catharsis. Her unique rock and singer-songwriter blend, complemented with the perfect amount of grit and attitude, shows that Amy is unapologetically the world’s newest brand of rockstar. 

With ten years of extensive vocal training under her belt, Amy began her pursuit of rock music when she was featured in Talent Nation’s Emerging Artist Showcase in Calgary in 2019. After her first performance, there was no going back, and even a worldwide pandemic could not slow Amy down. 

“There was nothing else to do, so I figured I would put all of my time into perfecting my craft and my voice. My senior year of high school I was in five musical groups, studying classical, jazz, and rock, partly online and partly in-person. I’m an all or nothing kind of person. I always have been, and I hit my stride during COVID because it forced me to really hone in on my work ethic more than ever before.” 

Known for her explosive stage presence and powerhouse voice, her small stature is deceiving; even at her young age, Amy is a force to be reckoned with in the rock world. She is a former two-time member of School of Rock Calgary’s House Band and became a School of Rock AllStar in 2021–an honour held by less than 1% of all School of Rock students worldwide and the highest level of achievement for a School of Rock student–on her first and only eligible year for the AllStars program. Fuelled by natural ambition she’s had since she was a child, Amy’s tireless drive has allowed her to play on stages in Calgary, Regina, and Toronto over the past three years. 

“I’m ambitious to an excessive extent, and I’ve definitely been called an overachiever a couple of times in my life,” she laughs. “But my greatest strength is that if I set out to do something, you can be sure it’s going to happen if I have anything to say about it.” 

Her debut single “Burn Me Alive” is like a bottle of her explosive live sound. A haunting and heart wrenching account of the drastic effect that other people in our lives can have on our mental health, her unique blend of hard rock and singer-songwriter musicalities that come to life in her dark, vulnerable songwriting and intense power vocals. Loud and unapologetic in her artistry, Amy’s work is nothing if not authentic, and her voice has never been stronger. 

“I’ve had enough of people telling me who I should be or making me feel like I’m not good enough for them. With my music, I want to channel these feelings and be open and honest about them and my own experiences, because I never want anyone to feel as alone as I’ve felt in the past. And in doing so, take back my own power and help others know that their worth is not held by other people.”