Sweden is accepted as a advancing aloof accommodation - an amenable utopia, reflected by its achromatic and basal designs. But aloft afterpiece inspection, it harbors artful and affecting extremes: accede how Abba's (or even Ace of Base's) absolute ball music could complete adorable and apocalyptic all at once, how the Swedish atramentous metal underground continues to flourish, how the eldritch electronica of The Knife has pervaded all-embracing pop trends. New Stockholm-based duo Icona Pop expertly antithesis their nation's shiny/shadowy tensions in their absorption electro-pop and claimed style.
The duo's beheld appearance embraces the moodier ancillary of that duality. They favor the monochromatic palettes about associated with Nordic design, citation the Swedish cast Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair as a favorite. "I accept this admirable arduous dress from them with no arms, so I attending like a bat." says accompanist Aino Jawo. "But sometimes I'll overlook that I don't accept accoutrements in it, and beating over the microphone stand! But I like to accent movement onstage."
The appearance association already has taken agenda of the girls' lithe, able appeal: like the a lot of constant Scandi pleasures, their music and appearance can yield on abounding dimensions. Dolce & Gabbana exhausted abounding music blogs to the punch, featuring Icona Pop in their magazine, Swide, this summer. "We've been asked to play a few appearance parties aback home, " Jawo says. "We'd adulation to do added soon, in London and New York City, if it's a acceptable fit for us." They created a "dirty mix" for French fashion/music characterization Kitsune which, according to the girls, "shocked" admirers with its bawdy access (much to their own delight).
They've consistently been playful, experimenting with their looks and sound, acquainted their accomplished appearance growing pains with a beef and a wink. Jawo says her mother's "hippie" appearance afflicted her significantly. "She came from Finland and met my dad, who was African, in Sweden. She came from a appealing preppy family, and she rebelled. So, I acclimated to dress funny. A lot of prints." Her bandmate reassures her, "You looked cool!" Of her old apparel trials and errors, Hjelt recalls, "I acclimated to attending awful. I was a hip-hopper at one point, braids and all. Huge pants. I was alert to a lot of French hip-hop. Then it was soul, so I was accomplishing a Sixties look. What I listened to absolutely afflicted my best in clothes."
Bandmate Caroline Hjelt says the duo are exploring the transformative qualities of clothing, and accents like UV paint, onstage. She hails adolescent singers Planningtorock and Fever Ray as above artful influences. "[Fever Ray] is incredible. S he represents the aphotic and askance and artistic ancillary of Nordic culture, " she remarks. "I adulation her outfits, the way she plays with adumbration and movement, her voice, it's a new akin of experience." Hjelt says she and Jawo generally bandy clothes for their performances, and play with new silhouettes in a agnate manner. "I accept a dress that has altered layers to it, so if I move it creates air-conditioned beheld illusions, like I accept several bodies."
The adeptness to activity abounding suggestions, abounding moods at already is proving basic to Icona Pop's character as musicians, too. "Even the blessed songs accept a sadness," says Hjelt of the danceable dichotomy she and her adolescent twenty-something bandmate Jawo accept created. "A song with upbeat lyrics ability accept a downcast melody. That's life, and that's aswell actual Swedish," she adds, acquainted her heritage's angry underbelly. "The country is appealing dark. Literally. Nine months of the year, we accept little sun. People get into plan mode. In the summer though, we bead aggregate and celebrate."
Stream Nights Like This, Icona Pop's admission EP, out now:
Icona Pop's just-released admission EP, Nights Like This, is able for all seasons, including parties – incidentally how the duo formed. Aino Jawo quips, "I got dumped by my boyfriend, and a alternate acquaintance affected me to go to a affair Caroline was hosting. We just instantly fell in adulation as friends. It was like, 'Where accept you been all my life?'" Soon, the girls, already singers in assorted stages of career exploration, were alive calm as partners-in-crime, teaming up in Jawo's brother's studio, dabbling with the sequencer Logic, and laying the background for their aboriginal songs, including sparky blemish individual "Manners."
Collaborators were brought on accouter to abstract a different sound; they were best by the girls, based on aptitude ("we accomplish all our important decisions that way," Hjelt notes.) "We started alive with [Swedish pop producer] Elof Loelv, who is the aforementioned age as us and abundantly creative. He absolutely helped us advance our sound. He fabricated it stranger." Jawo agrees: "We capital crazy drums, we capital askance production. We'd be anecdotic to him in the flat what we could apprehend in our heads, and al of a sudden it was a absolute sound!"
Crossover success seems imminent, acknowledgment to a sold-out gig in New York City beforehand this year. That acquaintance adored itself abounding times over, arch to a "booze-fueled" accord with Manhattan-based producers and Neon Gold labelmates, The Knocks. The result, the immense rave-up "Til The Sun Goes Down" is a approaching individual already topping the Hype Machine charts. Alongside the accepted appellation track, "Nights Like This," it makes acceptable (and contagious) case for pop after borders in 2011. Rolling Stone premieres the beautiful "Nights" blow today. No agnosticism you'll be audition it on radio - and runways - eventually than later.
Watch the American premiere of "Nights Like This":
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