Karine Polwart (born 23 December 1970) is a Scottish singer-songwriter, generally associated with the folk scene. After singing with Malinky and Battlefield Band, her debut album ''Faultlines'' won an armful of awards, and has been followed up with ''Scribbled in Chalk'', ''Fairest Floo'er'' (an album of traditional songs performed with minimal instrumentation), ''This Earthly Spell'' and 2012's ''Traces''.
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!!Tropes in use:

* AlbumTitleDrop: Her preferred method of album titling; only ''Faultlines'' has an actual TitleTrack.
* ArcSymbol: Herons. She loves 'em.
* BlasphemousBoast: A mild one in ''Cover your Eyes'', with the line "Not even God Himself could stop the northerlies from blowing"
* BreakthroughHit: She's never actually had a mainstream hit, but in terms of getting noticed as a folk artist, Polwart acknowledges "The Sun's Comin' Over The Hill" as fulfilling this role for her.
* BrotherSisterTeam: Sometimes writes with her brother Steven, who also plays guitar in her backing band. Most of ''Fairest Floo'er'' was performed by just the two of them.
* CannotTellALie: "Tongue That Cannot Lie".
* CessationOfExistence: "Light On The Shore".
* CharityMotivationSong: "A Well for Zoe".
* ChildrenAreInnocent: "Daisy"
* DeathByIrony: First invoked, then inverted in "The Sun's Comin' Over The Hill" with the protagonist's death "full of whiskey and irony" followed by the narrator's failure to emulate it.
* DisposableSexWorker: The implied fate of the narrator of ''Maybe There's a Road''.
* EarlyBirdCameo: A poem appears without title or explanation on the last page of the ''Scribbled In Chalk'' CD booklet. It's actually part of "Behind Our Eyes", which would appear on her next album, two years later.
* FadingIntoTheNextSong: The transition from "Firethief" into "Behind Our Eyes" on ''This Earthly Spell''.
* FolkRock: Some of her early material, before she settled down to more of a straight [[FolkMusic Modern Folk]] style.
* GreatestHitsAlbum: The Canadian release ''Threshold'', though it oddly omits "The Sun's Comin' Over The Hill" (see Breakthrough Hit above).
* GriefSong: Quite a few. "Waterlily" is a pretty full-on example; "The Sun's Comin' Over The Hill" merges the Grief Song with EarnYourHappyEnding to produce a more hopeful variant, and there are numerous others.
* HappilyEverAfter: "John C. Clark (The Gasman Song)"
* HappilyFailedSuicide: the widowed narrator of "The Sun's Comin' Over The Hill" tries to replicate the circumstances of her husband's death, with this result.
* TheInvisibleBand: Only one song, "I'm Gonna Do It All", has an official promo video, and Karine isn't in it. Instead the whole song is lip-synced by a 9-year-old girl.
* IWantSong: "I'm Gonna Do It All"
* NatureLover: "Take Its Own Time", "We're All Leaving"
* OutOfGenreExperience: In among a run of very dark songs on ''This Earthly Spell'', "The News" is a spectacular bit of MoodWhiplash not only for being suddenly LighterAndSofter, but also being performed in a jazz/doo-wop style never heard in her catalogue before or since.
* PosthumousNarration:
** ''Maybe There's a Road'' heavily implies that that the narrator has been DeadAllAlong.
** ''Azalea Flower'' features the narrator apparently telling the story of her own murder, and then switches to a third person POV.
* ProtestSong: "Cover Your Eyes"
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Averting this trope is the whole point of "Terminal Star". Sadly, though it's a good attempt, she doesn't quite get it right: the song is about a star 100 million light years away, which is orders of magnitude too far away to be visible to the naked eye.
* ShoutOut: A great many songs are based on folklore and a few are RippedFromTheHeadlines.
* ShrugOfGod: "Sorry" is usually assumed to be about Tony Blair and the Second Gulf War, but she won't confirm or deny it. Significant in that she's usually happy to explain the meanings of her songs.
* SingerSongwriter
* SofterAndSlowerCover: Essentially the contents of ''Scottish Songbook'', a cover album comprised solely of songs by Scottish artists.
* StepfordSmiler: "Only One Way"
* SwitchingPOV: ''Azalea Flower'' swaps from a first person to a third person narration after the first verse, with the implication that the original narrator has been murdered.
* ThisIsUnforgivable: "Sorry"
* TwistedChristmas: "Strange News" is a true story about this happening to the Polwart family.
* UncommonTime: "Harder To Walk These Days Than Run" swaps between 4/4 and 9/8; "Terminal Star" is in 7/4.
* WatchingTheSunset: "Follow The Heron"
* WithLyrics: Wrote words to FuturePilotAKA's instrumental "Maid of the Loch".
* WorthLivingFor: "The Sun's Comin' Over The Hill"