Nordic Spotlight
The best music and music festivals in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands
Iceland is a notoriously beautiful country. About one-third of its population lives in its metropolitan capital, Reykjavik; the rest of the country is mostly greenery, mountains, and wildlife as far as the eye can see, with really just one two-lane road connecting it all. Anyone who’s seen it in the sunlight might describe it as […]
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. […]
On Norwegian duo Misty Coast’s Bandcamp page, the band’s bio is just this quote from the always-trustworthy My Old Kentucky Blog: “Dreamy, psychedelic vibes are a necessary requirement of a balanced music diet and Norwegian duo Misty Coast, comprised of Megaphonic Thrift members Linn Frøkedal and Richard Myklebust, are the latest discovery keeping us healthy.” […]
Finnish artist Jaakko Eino Kalevi has been releasing music in some form or another for over a decade now, but full-length albums by him are relatively infrequent occasions. This Friday, he’ll release his newest, Out of Touch, via Weird World, the Domino Records imprint that also released his 2015 self-titled album. “People in the Centre of […]
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 […]
Okay, sure: here at Nordic Spotlight, we love to expose the talents of rising, newer Nordic artists. But sometimes, a Nordic artist who has achieved global success time and time again just does something that reminds us why we constantly look for the artists that in years, maybe decades, will be among the whole world’s […]
Joordan Mackay‘s two members have never met in real life. The Finnish duo’s songs come together without the two people involved in it ever meeting face to face. Sure, the story of a band’s members meeting on the Internet before uniting in person for one, and then many, jam sessions is already a familiar tale, […]
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 […]
Sometimes, it feels like vanity on social media is a distinctly American phenomenon. Reality TV and celebrity culture is strongly rooted in the United States, where children indirectly learn from a young age that money, success, and fame are directly correlated, if not outright equivalent. What’s more, social media’s leading platforms were invented here, and […]
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 […]