FORMER Horsham resident Alice Skye has won the chance to perform on a national stage.
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The 22-year-old singer-songwriter was announced as the 2018 triple j Unearthed NIMA winner on Wednesday.
The win means Alice – who also plays piano – will perform at the National Indigenous Music Awards in Darwin on August 11.
She will share the stage with Kardajala Kirridarra, Busby Marou and Baker Boy at the awards.
Alice said she was still processing the announcement.
“It will take me a couple of days to realise, ‘This is happening’,” she said.
“To come after past winners like Baker Boy and Thelma Plum – who are artists who are killing it at the moment – feels pretty daunting. But it’s really exciting to be given the opportunity.
“Hopefully it means good things for me.”
Alice said the details of her performance at the awards were still being finalised, and she was unsure whether she would play one song or multiple.
“All I know is that I’m going at the moment,” she said.
“My band and I have talked about what we’d do if it was one song.
“There’s a song we sing about the Grampians, so we’re thinking we might go with that one as an ode to home.”
Alice’s band members Sam and Kane King are also from Horsham.
Alice is nominated for best new talent and film clip of the year at the NIMAs.
She is also part of an Unearthed collaboration for NAIDOC Week with Perth rapper Ziggy Ramo and rapper, producer and beats technician Trials, which saw them create a new song from scratch in a week.
The song premiered on triple j on Thursday afternoon.
Alice moved to Melbourne at 18 to attend university and pursue a music career. She released her debut album Friends With Feelings earlier this year.
She will finish her first tour at the weekend, and hopes she can then get back into the studio to record new material.
“The first album was finished quite some time ago, so I've had a bit of time since recording those songs,” she said. “I'm so ready to start recording again.”
Alice returned to Horsham last month as part of the city’s Art Is… Festival, where she performed in Horsham Town Hall with Benny Walker.