PIQSIQ

Legends

On the new PIQSIQ album Legends, Tiffany and Inuksuk again make a powerful statement in crafting 8 pieces around beloved figures from Inuit culture with textural tracks at the beginning and end to welcome you into the experience and gently place you back into your reality—some well-known and celebrated, and others more obscure but no less fascinating. The record was tracked at Monarch Studios in Vancouver with producer Alex Penney. All vocals and percussion were done by PIQSIQ with additional accompaniment and production by Alex Penney.

“We wanted to honour our traditional stories—narratives that are not just entertainment, but fundamental to Inuit identity,” Tiffany says. “These legends have long been how we pass on critical teachings: How to stay safe on the land, how to live in the right relationship with each other, with the animals, and with the spirit world. These are stories of survival, respect, and deep connection to place.”

Inuksuk adds about their process, “We created visual slideshows for each legend and sourced historic and contemporary Inuit artworks that depicted these beings. While recording, we projected these images in the studio, and then sang to what we saw and felt. It was deeply immersive and visual; we let the visuals guide our vocal responses.”

Each piece in Legends is a narrative journey, causing the listener to feel as if they are entering a portal in real time. PIQSIQ’s longstanding commitment to improvisation, something the sisters have previously struggled to harness in studio, was adapted for Legends by recording live, capturing and crafting vocals in a Boss RC-505 Loop Station. Using this technique allowed them to achieve the best of both worlds—the dynamism of live performance with the precision of modern production.

In all, Legends marks a major step forward in PIQSIQ’s evolution, from the use of traditional Inuit drums (qilaut) and other forms of percussion, to developing storytelling skills that bring ancient characters and teachings into a modern immersive and emotionally resonant context. “Each song is its own mini-journey—epic in scale, yet tightly composed,” Inuksuk says. “This album feels like the purest synthesis of who we are as artists, because it brings us full circle in drawing on the stories that shaped us as children and reimagining them through the lens of our lives today. By reconnecting with that sense of wonder, play, and cultural memory, we were able to create something deeply honest and rooted in who we are.”

With a style perpetually galvanized by darkness and haunting northern beauty, sisters, Tiffany Ayalik and Inuksuk Mackay, come together to create Inuit style throat singing duo, PIQSIQ. Performing ancient traditional songs and eerie new compositions, they leave their listeners enthralled with the infinity of possible answers to the question “what is the meaning of life.”

With roots in Nunavut, the two grew up in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. After years of forging hard won skill, they developed their own form blended with haunting melodies and otherworldly sounds. Approaching adulthood, they realized throat singing was not only a musical expression, but a radical, political act of cultural revitalization.

Recently, PIQSIQ has released the soundtrack they composed for the full length animated feature for the Leo Award Nominated, Sunburnt Unicorn, as well as an in studio album called Legends where each track is inspired by a creature encounter from Inuit Mythology. They also composed the score for Zacharias Kunuk’s latest film Uiksarinnggitara (Wrong Husband) and collaborated with National Geographic on a speaker series featuring the first ever Indigenous speaker. Fans can catch their music in the new hit show North of North, now featured on Netflix. PIQSIQ are currently completing a 2025 tour through Europe, Australia and Japan where they continue to create dynamic audience experiences that change with every show.