Writing intro columns for what is essentially the same format every month now is getting a little repetitive, and I’m pretty lazy, so this one will be done in an arch-minimalist style. Three Swedish artists. Three Swedish artists. They are good. That’s it. Here’s the latest batch of tracks we’ve selected for our Amazing Sweden playlist, in association with Nordic By Nature and STIM. Do yourself a favour and check them out below.
BADLANDS is Catharina Jaunviksna, a songwriter and producer based in Malmö. Echo is the second single taken from her upcoming debut album Locus, set for release in April. It’s a song that slips between characters. At times it sounds like a pleasant enough slice of disco-pop. But suddenly, elements like dark, ominous synths enter the mix, and the track shows its teeth and gains a colder edge. Jaunviksna describes it a ‘a club tune, but with that apocalyptic twist’, and there’s something to that. It’s the perfect, emotionally dissonant soundtrack to one of those nights where you oscillate between having the time of your life and stumbling into the worst corners of your consciousness.
Fantasy is the second single from Gothenburg trio WILDHART‘s imaginatively titled debut EP EP1, out on March 4th on Gaphals. Vocalist Ylva Holmdahl describes it as ‘a sensual and honest song about being attracted to someone, a person you had a dream about. A hot dream. You know that feeling, when you have one of those, and it sticks to your mind like glue, making you start to fantasise about a person an unreasonable amount’. So now you know. Fantasy is a piece of spacey-pop with a little dash of jazz blended into the mix, giving it a fuggy, hazy atmosphere. It’s liquid-like in its construction, constantly morphing and and transforming as you listen, supple-pop that constantly shifts texture and sound.
Photo: Simon Ryden
HUNT‘s 2013 debut, Dark Come Sooner, took them to some pretty novel places, including a collaborative gig at Busan International Short Film Festival in South Korea, which is not somewhere most indie band can boast they’ve played. The opening shot of their second album Branches, Not Sorry, is a more straightforwardly direct song that the other two listed here. Not Sorry is simply indie-pop, done extremely well. All the elements, from the driving guitar lines to the yearning croon in the vocals, it just ticks all the boxes of a fantastic tune. Branches comes out on April 8th on Lövely Records.
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