{"id":675632,"date":"2026-11-05T10:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T10:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675632\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T10:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T10:26:10","slug":"ecca-vandal-wins-2026-australian-music-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675632\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecca Vandal Wins 2026 Australian Music Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEcca Vandal<\/a> is crowned winner of the 22nd annual Australian Music Prize<\/a> for her sophomore album, Looking for People to Unfollow (via Loma Vista Recordings).<\/p>\n

\n\tSponsored by SoundMerch, the AMP lauds the outstanding Australian albums based on artistic merit rather than commercial sales. And its winner takes home a A$50,000 grand prize.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tExplore\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

See latest videos, charts and news<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking for People to Unfollow was announced as the 2026 AMP<\/a> champ on Thursday (Nov. 11), beating out a nine-strong shortlist<\/a> that included LPs by Genesis Owusu, Grace Cummings, Julia Jacklin and Karnivool, as decided by a music industry panel.<\/p>\n

\n\tBased in Melbourne, Australia, and born in South Africa of Sri Lankan heritage, Ecca Vandal dropped her self-titled debut in 2017. With her long-percolating followup LP, plaudits came from Zane Lowe, and Spotify\u2019s international editorial team, which anointed her as one of the streaming giant\u2019s Artists To Watch 2026<\/a>. Australia\u2019s Triple J locked-in Looking for People to Unfollow as its feature album of the week.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe AMP extends a breakout year for the genre-bending artist, during which she performed at Coachella, her first-ever performance at a major U.S. festival; made her U.S. TV debut with a performance<\/a> on Jimmy Kimmel Live; and landed seven nominations for the 2026 ARIA Awards, to be presented later this month in Sydney.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, she\u2019s on the final leg of her tour in support of Looking for People to Unfollow, with sold-out dates<\/a> to come in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to Billboard about how audiences should prepare for the live Ecca Vandal experience, she remarked:<\/a> \u201cAside from the flashing lights, I\u2019d say come as you are and be prepared to lose yourself for a little while. I\u2019ll be bringing all my energy so bring yours too. I love when a show feels like a little world that only exists for us for that hour, with everyone just collectively losing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tModeled on the U.K.\u2019s Mercury Prize, the AMP launched in 2005 as a platform to \u201cdiscover, reward and promote new Australian music of excellence,\u201d and is today coveted as the most prestigious national award for the album format.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrevious winners include efforts by The Avalanches, Sampa the Great (twice), Gurrumul, A.B. Original, Courtney Barnett and last year\u2019s recipient<\/a>, Ninajirachi\u2019s I Love My Computer.<\/p>\n

\n\tStream Looking for People to Unfollow below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ecca Vandal is crowned winner of the 22nd annual Australian Music Prize for her sophomore album, Looking for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[83241,286144,13724,93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-675632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-amp","tag-australian-music-prize","tag-bbnews","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}