Leslie Feist is sitting quietly in a booth at the Rivoli. She has a soft spot for the restaurant, since she used to work here as a bartender, before she had to worry about major-label record deals and fanatically coordinated PR campaigns. Her hair is tied up in a schoolgirl ponytail, lips smudged with cherry gloss, nails dressed in chipping remnants of last week’s scarlet polish. She is busy assembling a care package of miniature ’70s vintage clothes (picked up on a recent trip through London’s Portobello market) for a friend’s new baby. Even her baby presents are perfectly indie. The 31-year-old singer is pale and looks a bit tired, which gives her a dreamy, hard-living alt-rock sex appeal. If her tight pale-blue jeans and well-pilled woollen sweater look like they’ve spent the better part of their nomadic lives heaped on hotel room floors, it’s because they have.

Feist is Canada’s reigning indie-music princess, but she’s wooing a broader audience. Let It Die, her last album, sold over 100,000 copies in Canada and another 400,000 worldwide, earning her a Juno for best new artist and best alternative album. Her new album, The Reminder, came out in May and is being treated to an aggressive marketing push. It debuted in second place on Canadian album charts, at first place in iTunes downloads, and seems to be playing in Starbucks the world over (her label, Arts & Crafts/EMI, arranged a distribution deal with the coffee chain). The Reminder meanders from bossa nova to folk rock, lilting ballads and an exuberant cover of “Sealion Woman,” most famously performed by Nina Simone (her idol, she says). Feist co-produced The Reminder and laboured over the lyrics. Marked by grown-up regret and little-girl idealism, it’s just mild enough to secure huge commercial success.

Our meeting is the long-awaited result of a series of ludicrously complex exchanges with her publicist, detailing the frenzy of Feist’s schedule and the virtual impossibility of meeting with her for more than 15 minutes. Feist is furiously busy at the moment, I’m told with irritation. She’s rehearsing her new album, embarking on a frantic interview schedule with the international press (including Vogue, The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune), heading on her next tour and shooting videos for two of The Reminder’s leading tracks. She’s also singing on a soundtrack for the upcoming Ethan Hawke–directed film The Hottest State, alongside Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson. My expectations—to speak not only with Feist, but with some of her closest friends and relatives—are apparently hopelessly naive. You’d think I was planning a coffee date with Barbra Streisand.

Her battalion of handlers seems to have a better sense of her burgeoning celebrity than she does—or than she’ll admit to. When Feist and I finally chat over chai tea lattes (she asks for hers sweetened with maple syrup), all signs of divadom are well hidden. She talks about how she doesn’t even own a proper stereo and how she’s considering investing in an iPod dock. And when I ask about her two upcoming concerts at Massey Hall, she plays the guileless-girl-in-a-big-city card to charming effect, explaining with wide eyes how she’s never been to the venue and how she’s confused it with Carnegie Hall ever since she was little. Then she presses her fingers to her temples and emits a little giggle. “Just had a sugar rush from the syrup,” she says.

Like seattle was to early-’90s grunge, Toronto is to the burgeoning indie rock scene. Cost of living is a factor: it’s still possible to survive in Parkdale on art and ramen. Leading the rhythmic charge are guitar pop bands like Metric and the Hidden Cameras. The biggest of them all is the sprawling collective Broken Social Scene (Feist, a sometime BSS performer, is girlfriend of ringleader Kevin Drew). Over the past four years, the bands’ music has worked its way into college dorms and vintage clothing shops everywhere, claiming pride of place in the iPod of any self-respecting hipster.