MONTREAL - Canada's hottest rock band is decidedly cool to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Grammy winners Arcade Fire suggest on their Internet blog that the Conservative leader is out of tune with the rest of the country when it comes to issues such as the environment.
The band says Harper has championed "some pretty destructive initiatives" and that it's important to get out and vote on May 2.
They're wading into fairly foreign territory for Canadian artists and celebrities. It's par for the course in the United States for big names to weigh in on politics. When U.S. President Barack Obama was running for office, the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Tom Hanks were supporters.
Country group the Dixie Chicks became persona non grata in many circles several years ago after their singer badmouthed then-president George W. Bush at a concert.
Arcade Fire's Internet post is comparatively tame, stopping short of explicitly telling Canadians not to vote for the Tories and providing links to the Elections Canada website to tell people how to vote if they're out of the country.
But it appears to mark the first partisan peep out of a well-known Canadian artist during this election campaign. Singer Nelly Furtado has been tweeting up a storm, encouraging people to vote in the May 2 election, but staying away from suggesting where their votes should go.
Though Canadian artists tend to shy away from the campaign trail, at least in comparison to their American counterparts, it's not unheard of in Canadian politics for singers and actors to get involved. During the last election campaign in 2008 many actors and their union, ACTRA, were quite vocal in their opposition to the Conservatives over funding cuts to the arts.
Arcade Fire's missive in this campaign is in keeping with the anti-Harper sentiments coming from artists during the last election. Their posting also gives links to several other sites with stories on Harper, including one where he dismisses the Kyoto Accord on climate change as a socialist scheme.
Other sites deal with the Alberta tarsands and the arrests during the G20 protest in Toronto.
The band, which won the best album of the year Grammy for "The Suburbs," concludes the short message by saying "Canada is still a pretty good country, and worth fighting for."
The prime minister's entourage appeared to be taking the public diss in stride.
When informed of the blog posting this week, a music-loving Harper spokesman -- who was performing the dual role of DJ on a Conservative campaign bus -- cranked up the speaker on a few Arcade Fire tunes.
It's not the first time Harper has run afoul of musicians during the campaign.
A YouTube video of him singing John Lennon's "Imagine" during a campaign stop in Winnipeg was ordered yanked by Lenono Music, which holds the rights to the song.
However, other versions of Harper's duet with 11-year-old singing sensation Maria Aragon remain available on the Internet.
