While it’s rare to hear about openly gay musicians making way in the mainstream media, it’s even less likely to come across someone who is openly transgender.  Lucas Silveira of the Canadian rock band The Cliks, which includes all LGBT musicians, switched things up in the early 2000s when his band became the first with a transgender lead singer to be signed to a major record label. Today the Toronto native is considered one of the most visible and iconic transgender people in the music industry.

With three full-length albums already produced, including The Cliks, Snakehouse, and Dirty King, the band has found success placing in “Best Of” charts, MTV video countdowns, and has been mentioned in numerous mainstream music magazines.  Album to album, the group produces unique, catchy, and emotional tracks that attract a variety of different audiences. Silveira’s powerful, entrancing vocals are like nothing you’ve heard before; and combined with powerful guitar and catchy melodies, you’ll be pulled in and desperate for more.

Silveira, interested in having more of a connection with his fans, frequently uploads videos to his YouTube channel acoustically covering song requests from his Twitter and YouTube follwers. Some such unique covers include “Poker Face”, “Sex on Fire”, and “Halo” and attractively show us Silveira’s raw and beautiful vocal talent.

All in all, the group has stuck to Silveira’s main goal: to have his music be more of the focus than his gender identity. In an MSNBC interview, the musician spoke out saying, “As a human being I feel a responsibility to myself to be who I am. I can’t take on this, ’You are the poster child for trans men or trans people’ thing because people in the trans world are totally different. To me, it’s just about acceptance, about things that are different, and being able to normalize that. If I can be out in the world and have people treat me like everybody else, that would be cool.”