Looking at where Katie Munshaw came from and where she is today, one can make a case that she’s used to straddling wildly disparate worlds. Growing up in Oshawa, Ontario, she was all-in on sports as a kid, playing rep hockey and excelling at lacrosse and swimming.

Today, she’s the frontwoman of the winningly atmospheric, decidedly downtempo quartet Dizzy, whose debut album, Baby Teeth, touches on everything from golden high-school memories to suburban ennui.

So is Munshaw a hypercompetitive jock who’s using her God-given drive to make her music-business dreams come true? Or is she a person with a sensitive side who, more than once during her childhood, found herself wondering what she was doing sitting in locker rooms with kids convinced that winning isn’t everything—it’s the only thing?

She allows that she’s at a point in her life where maybe the artist has truly won out.

“I think I’m a pretty sensitive person—it’s pretty easy to get me teary,” Munshaw says from a Hamilton tour stop. “I get a lot of that from my dad. Although he was a huge jock and a goon on the ice, he wrote poetry, and I think that’s where I get the sensitive side from. But I also feel that everyone’s emotions are so not linear. That whole record is a really good example of that.”

Munshaw and her bandmates—brothers Charlie, Alex, and Mac­kenzie Spencer—have enjoyed something of a charmed life since coming together as a band. Munshaw and Charlie started playing music together in Grade 9. Eventually, the singer and drummer got serious with the addition of Alex and Mackenzie on guitar and bass.

After flirting with the idea of acting, Munshaw was in school for journalism when Dizzy began playing around Toronto. One of the band’s earliest gigs caught the attention of Royal Mountain Records, the label cofounded by Hollarado’s Menno Versteeg. The appeal was obvious, with Munshaw’s seductively cool, almost jazzy delivery (think Fiona Apple or Portishead’s Beth Gibbons) married to a strain of lush, highly textured dream-pop mastered by U.K. icons like Bat for Lashes and Goldfrapp.

Almost overnight, journalism was off the table, Baby Teeth was recorded, and good things started to happen for Dizzy. To date, the band’s racked up millions of streams on Spotify, walked away with a Juno for alternative album of the year, and committed to touring the world, so that day jobs are now a memory.

The rapid rise has been, Munshaw says, surreal. “A lot of the songs were written after high school, which is weird, and weird to have to play every night,” she says. “But we’re writing for a new record now.”

And while it’s too early to say what direction Dizzy will head in, based on initial returns, Munshaw continues to embrace her sensitive side.

“­I think one of the biggest changes from Baby Teeth and these new songs will also be that I’m not in Oshawa all the time,” she says, “when I’m missing my family and my friends in Washington one night and Philadelphia the next and then the U.K. the next week. There’s this whole world that’s so different from being at home, and then there’s also the other side of it where you’re sad and you miss your family, so here’s some alcohol every single night. It’s this question of ‘Do I like myself on the road?’

“A lot of time musicians are these sensitive or introverted people, and I feel like I’m one of them. And then you go on-stage and feel self-conscious and worry about what people are thinking about you. You’re putting a lot of self-worth into a career where people are judging you and whether they like you and your thoughts. That’s something I’ve struggled with a lot.”

Dizzy plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Friday (May 3).