Nordic Spotlight
The best music and music festivals in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands
A band with the word “bird” in its name has a song with the word “flying” in its title. So consistent it’s kitschy? Thankfully, not quite. Danish duo BlackieBlueBird‘s “Flying Too Close to the Ground” is as delicate as is its titular image, and its fragility is vital to its deeply human profundity. The first […]
You would expect a certain amount of ingenuity from a band named The Entrepreneurs, and on their new single, “Heroine,” the Danish rockers don’t disappoint. The second taste from their upcoming debut album Noise & Romance, this thunderous, six-minute behemoth is equal parts ‘90s pedal-driven guitar rock, sawtoothed post-punk, and crooning indie-rock love song, all […]
You might’ve noticed that we’re absolutely huge fans of Danish act CHINAH, a trio that warps electropop in ghostly directions while retaining the life-affirming, positive forces that pop music aptly provides. The band’s debut album, ANYONE, arrives this Friday, and to celebrate, we’re sharing “Real Thing?”, a recent single and album highlight. As with previous ANYONE single “Strange […]
No, Trentemøller‘s cover of Neil Young’s “Transformer Man” isn’t his first cover (not at all—he put out a full album of covers, Harbour Boat Trips 01 – Copenhagen, in 2009), but it sure is an interesting choice of Neil Young song to cover. Most folks know Young as the guy behind freewheeling rock hits ranging from […]
Leave it to the Danes to bring weirdness into electronic and pop music. Last month, we freaked out about how Danish trio CHINAH’s “Strange Is Better” subverted much of what we love about these genres to tremendously exciting and hooky effect; this month, Danish duo mono mono seems to be filling that role for us. […]
A double dose of Nordic artists here! Danish five-piece MALMØ has tapped Faroese singer Eivør for shared vocal duties on the song “The Way,” taken from MALMØ’s debut album, We Come from The Stars. MALMØ frontperson and namesake Maria Malmoe teams up with Eivør, known quite well for her work on Game of Thrones (a show that’s about as Nordic as […]
It’s very likely that even those who haven’t heard of Danish artist Selma Judith have at least heard her. She’s performed harp on live sessions by international sensation and established Nordic Spotlight favorite MØ—herself from Denmark—and her time spent with such a leading pop mind has certainly rubbed off on her own music. “Kind of […]
We’ve previously lavished Danish artist LEW with praise; back in 2016, we premiered her single “Lights On.” Some two-and-a-half-years later, we’ve heard from Sara Lewis Sørensen again via a haunting ballad called “You Said” that makes us beyond happy she’s back. It also makes us quite sad. LEW songs are generally dejection parties; Sørensen is an […]
CHINAH, a Danish electropop trio about whom we’ve been raving for a while now, is setting the bar pretty high with its newest song’s title, “Strange Is Better.” It’s almost as though CHINAH—whose members are frontwoman Fine Glindvad, guitarist Simon Kjær, and producer Simon Andersson—is fully aware of how bizarre and amazing its most recent […]
If I’m honest, part of me wishes this was a Stevie Wonder cover. But that feeling disappears mighty fast when the cooing vocals and the sparkling synths kick in on this track. One half of a new double A side single from Danish duo GENTS, it is synth pop at its finest: cool, sensual and […]