Halifax native Ruth Minnikin has long been a vibrant member of her hometown’s passionate and collaborative music scene. Her rich sonic career began in the late ’90s when she was 17 and her first band, Booming Airplanes, was signed to EMI. Since then she has headed up numerous ensembles, ranging from country (The Guthries) to orchestral indie pop (The Heavy Blinkers). Meanwhile, her latest project, Ruth Minnikin and her Bandwagon, and their recently released debut album, Depend on This, has people talking. An album Minnikin colourfully calls “a conceptually dramatized exaggeration of an avant-garde jalapeño pepper on a life raft,” it combines the honesty and soul of a true Canadian singer-songwriter with splashes of strikingly modern production, soaring pop arrangements and alt-country swagger. The disc has garnered glowing reviews from publications here as well as in Europe and the U.K., and her recent U.K./Canadian tour was a smash success.