August marked the debut of AMAZING SWEDEN, Nothing But Hope and Passion’s collaborative waltz with Nordic By Nature and STIM, The Swedish Songwriter Association, through the best music to come from up north. In case you missed it last time out, here’s a refresher course on the format: we bring you three of the best tracks to emerge from Sweden in the past month, you get all this great music compiled into a Spotify playlist and can use the hip Scandinavian music knowledge you’ve gained to blag your way to coolness/success/ political power.
Anyway, this month we’ve got another excellent spread of Swedish tunes. We’ve got lo-fi moon-pop from new PNKSLM signing BOYS, dreamy indie from long-time NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION favourites YAST and slow-burning electro-pop from the mysterious VANILLA EDIT.
BOYS is the solo project of HOLY guitarist Nora Karlsson, and Ever Before is a wistful dreamer of a track, clanging into life with scratchy pinball guitar riffs before taking a step back into a starrier, spacier chorus. Karlsson’s vocal strives for something just out of reach, a pitched ode to an imagined past or an alternative present. Debut EP Kind Of Hurt is out on PNKSLM on September 25th.
Photo: Jesper Berg
YAST are really very good, as the frequent exposure we give them on Nothing But Hope And Passion proves. Their latest single, Together Forever, is a piece of hazy dream-pop, opening up with shimmering guitar riffs before tuning down into showgaze blur. A little more melancholic in tone than some of their previous work, but still equally compelling. YAST’s new album My Dreams Did Finally Come True is out on Adrian Recordings on September 18th.
There was a low-level mystery about this one for a while. The crew behind Malmö label Naiv Recordings put Little Lies out a while ago, claiming that they’d met an artist called VANILLA at a party where she’d given them the song, but had since realised they had no means of getting in contact with her when they wanted to release it. She’s since been found, and clarified that her name is actually VANILLA EDIT and then released the track complete with a new video. Little Lies is a track soaked in weary resignation, from the beats and guitar flourishes that ripple across the track to the sigh buried in the chorus: ‘all my little li-es‘.
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