Caffeine & Big Dreams

Isabella will likely get the ingenue label thrown at her — after all, she's only 21 — but she's been doing this a long, long time. She's been playing guitar, writing songs and performing since she was seven, and left her hometown of Ottawa for Nashville as a teenager. Her debut album, Love Me Like That, came out in 2011 and she's already opened for Carrie Underwood. Caffeine & Big Dreams should push Isabella to the next level, and her timing couldn't be better, what with fellow upstarts like Kacey Musgraves and Lindi Ortega making a splash, and Taylor Swift breaking up with country music, leaving a giant hole in the Nashville scene. In fact, we're so sure that this is Isabella's time to shine, CBC Music recently kicked off its Next Big Thing series by profiling her.