Nordic Spotlight
The best music and music festivals in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands
The last time we wrote about Norwegian artist Ida Stein was in late 2015 when she released her song “Are We Changing,” and we couldn’t be happier to post about her again. “Race for Applause,” her newest single, is her first in a while—last May, she said on Facebook that she’d been “a bit more quiet […]
There’s this communal feeling that disseminates through space and permeates your body when you hear the Norwegian outfit Pelicat. Listening to its tunes, a compulsion to sway and bob and flitter becomes omnipresent. Its music is the kind you’d hear bringing strangers together in a dingy basement in suburban America or at a local haunt’s […]
The last time we wrote about Norwegian garage rock trio The Age of Colored Lizards was back in November, when we were directed to the band’s debut album, Daydreamer, which we absolutely loved. Now, the band is back with a new song, its first since that album’s release. “I’ll Be Waiting” is a reminder of the […]
Oslo-based Chrispy makes music that could fairly be described as, well, crisp. Maybe his choice of artist name is intentional: “I Want To Tell You,” his latest single, certainly paints him as someone capable of careful, lengthy consideration. The song is a well-thought-out detailing of the contrasting emotions that can tear at the seams of […]
Sail by Summer describes itself as “melancholic,” but its recent single “Facing Dullness” doesn’t immediately portray the Norwegian-Danish duo’s sorrow. Under stuttering synth splashes, pitter-patter drum work, and squelching guitar notes often blanketed in reverb and phaser, “Facing Dullness” sounds convivial on first impression, just as the heftily produced art of a long-running, mainstream radio synthpop […]
Le Corbeau is nothing if not ambitious. Øystein Sandsdalen’s pet project—many might know him best for his years playing guitar in Norwegian shoegaze outfit Serena Maneesh—dropped three albums at once back in November, with little in the way of advance warning. The trilogy, titled IV V VI, comes with a whopping 27 songs; “Psycho at the Wheel,” a […]
Although Lasse Lokoy appears to be a newer name in the world of forward-thinking Norwegian artists, he’s no stranger to success. He’s already well known as the bassist for incessantly buzzy Norwegian band Sløtface, which kept itself insanely busy in 2017 and 2018. The constant craze around that band’s agitating punk seems to have not […]
Although psychedelic music doesn’t always need vocals—think about the many endless instrumental interludes that defined psych rock’s earliest days—to convey the sense of wonder, joy, and innocence that drugs can incite, sometimes, vocals can reveal hallucinatory depths otherwise inaccessible. Swedish/Norwegian duo Lerin/Hystad understands this vocal-instrumental balance quite well: Starmap, its newest album, is its first to feature vocals. […]
As the story goes, some industry insiders saw the Oslo band Spielbergs play a small venue way up north in Trondheim, and they were so blown away by the band’s set that they started a label just to release the power-punk trio’s music. It worked: Spielbergs’ debut EP, Distant Star, premiered inside a Stereogum Band to […]
Hanne Hukkelberg‘s “Stardust” sounds thoroughly 2010s, but she’s been putting out music—and receiving acclaim for it—for well over a decade. Actually, “Stardust” celebrates 15 years of Hanne Hukkelberg impressing critics such as Pitchfork and The Guardian, and it scans as the work of an artist unlikely to lose touch with what’s made her special from […]