It's hard to imagine prairie school children waking at the crack of dawn on a crisp winter's morn for anything other than hockey.

But you never know -- if Chantal Kreviazuk's debut album Under These Rocks and Stones catches on, parents may find their kids asking for piano lessons.

"I listen to my record and go, 'Wow, the piano sounds cool!' " says Kreviazuk.

"Someone like Billy Joel or Tori Amos has pulled it off well. Van Halen and Led Zeppelin have pianos. Just because there's a piano doesn't mean it has to be a love song."

Far from it. The 22-year-old Winnipeg native is an electric performer who can make the tracks off Rocks and Stones resonate with intensity.

"I'm glad it comes off that way because I hate not being cool," she laughs. "I've got to be cool."

But, ah, if memory serves, kids who spent their time taking piano lessons were most often equal to the chess club in the schoolyard food chain.

"Absolutely, let me tell you. It was difficult come 16, 17 years old to tell my friends: 'I've got to be in by 1 a.m. because I have a make up (piano) lesson at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday.'"

The former child prodigy signed a record deal with Sony last winter.

Sony gets the total package: Talented, hip, young...

Perhaps too good a package? Doesn't the listener get the impression Kreviazuk has been developed in a Sony laboratory like so many VCRs and MiniDiscMans?

It's not often Tori Amos, Jann Arden, Alanis Morrisette, Jewel and Fiona Apple can be found wrapped together in plaid bell bottoms and combat boots.

"It's a stigma attached to the industry. Any compromises I made were for the public because I want my music to get out," Kreviazuk asserts one more time.

"I've never seen anyone at Sony in a suit, it's not like one guy sitting in an office making decisions."

By: Tyler McLeod