Say what you will about Grey’s Anatomy not really being the “must-see” event it once was (we wouldn’t necessarily argue with you), but you got to admit, they still know how to alert viewers to great under-the-radar pop finds. “Die Young”, from (previously MM-approved) Swedish indie duo The Sweet Serenades, is one of the prime-time soap’s latest compelling scene-soundtrackers.
Effectively pairing the rustic tenor of Serenades’ singer/ rhythmic guitarist Martin Nordvall with the sighing, featherweight coo of Club 8 vocalist Karolina Komstedt atop a melancholy recipe of wistful guitar, synth squiggles, cracking drums and rumbling bongos, midtempo ballad “Die Young” hones in on the all-too-familiar awkward scenario of a couple waking up from a one night stand with differing reactions.
“It’s a lie, we knew it all along”, emotes Nordvall on the hook, yet despite being fully aware of the “rules”, he’s still hesitant to budge from bed, wanting to milk every single second out of his post-lay state of bliss (“Oh I don’t wanna leave/ I just wanna lay here and watch you breathe”). Too bad Komstedt doesn’t share that same sense of euphoria, all she wants is for him to quickly depart before he falls for her any deeper: “I’m not looking for love/ I told you that I just wanna dance,” she pointedly reminds him, her words bathed in a weighted remorse.
Peep the MP3/ video below, followed by a dark n’ dubby “Die Young” remix put together by the Artymove gang.
Since catching our interest months ago with his highly addicting singles “Hurtful” and “Don’t Bring Flowers”, ginger-domed singer-songwriter Erik Hassle has become big stuff in his native Sweden, collecting not only a Top 10 album and two Top 40 singles, but the Swedish equivalent to a Best New Artist Grammy Award as well.
This year, the much-buzzed-about pop-soul-ster will finally steer his focus towards puncturing the US and UK markets with a re-packaging of his debut, now entitled Pieces; but for those not quite sold on why this guy is being touted amongst blog circles as one of music’s next breakthrough star, check the impressiveness that comes forth once Hassle’s silky blue-eyed-soul pipes are attached to pop faves both old and new:
“I Walk The Line” (Johnny Cash Cover)”
“Someday (The Strokes Cover)”
“Russian Roulette (Rihanna Cover)”
Good stuff, no?
Hassle’sPiecesdrops in the UK/ USA in March.Here’s the newest music clip take (his fourth!!) for future smash “Hurtful”:
Apparently Robyn thinks she’s Sade, what with the way she’s been cruelly holding out on releasing a new album (It may have only been five years since Robyn first hit stores, but that’s like, what, a thousand lifetimes in pop music time). Hopefully, though, the wait may be over sooner rather than later, as a possible early preview of the still-untitled LP has made it’s inevitable way to the Internets recently.
Previously sampled in it’s early stages via a brief YouTube clip back in December, the Diplo-helmed “No Hassle” casts Robyn as a patois-adopting “dancehall queen”, turning heads and garnering various shout-outs with the way she winds her body to the DJ’s hypnotic reggae-pop groove; all that she asks is that you don’t bother her while she’s lost in the rhythm’s “boom boom boom”.
Compared to Robyn’s previous catalogue highlights, “No Hassle” does seem a bit lacking in “wow” moments (Diplo’s production provides a mostly basic exercise of the dubstep/ dancehall sound), but that’s neither here nor there considering it carries a sturdy amount of pop hookiness and, hell, is A…NEW…ROBYN…JAM.
On Still Standing At Your Back Door, the debut full-length from nineteen-year-old Swedish twins Taxi Taxi!, sisters Miriam and Johanna Berhan go far out of their way to present themselves as old souls.
Yeah, their songwriting relies heavily on teenybopper-isms like puppy love and first heartaches, and you won’t ever mistake their squeaky harmonies as originating from some older and wiser female duo, but that’s the extent of any connection that could be made to America’s same-aged, Disney-backed tween-pop brigade. Instead of cheapened R&B-lite or pop-rock aural assaults, the Berhan sibs would rather surround their voices in beautifully earthen, acousti-folk settings. Their “girl-loves-boy” narratives? Over-dramatized poetics (most penned around the age of fifteen) about romantic addictions to boys with “troubled souls” (“Ripest Fruit”) and how snuggling close with the one you love brings about fantasies of marriage and kids (“More Childish Than In A Long Time”).
This strain for a beyond-our-years maturity in both musical and lyrical forms helps establish Still Standing as an ideal winter-time listen for listeners of all different ages, but interestingly enough, it’s true standout moment arises when Taxi Taxi! act more their age, as they do on the merry “Old Big Trees”, a summer camp sing-along-structured ditty featuring tender oom-pah strummings and the girls’ cutesy doe-eyed-meets-goth attempt at convincing some boy of the great couple they could make.
“Bachelor, oh bachelor,” they coo in girlish unison, “Maybe my skeleton would look quite beautiful beside yours”. All together now: Awww…
Ever since it’s premiere a couple months back, “Alejandro”, Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster-housed ode to letting go of old Latin lovers, has inspired plenty of giddy “This reminds me of…” chatter amongst her ever-growing fanbase, with many targeting those two aforementioned records.
But for anyone who kept their ears glued to Top 40 radio in the early ’90’s, “Alejandro” read the best as a tribute of sorts to ABBA via the slow, pseudo-reggae lope and weighty, Euro-dance-pop galumph relied on by that other mega-selling Swedish quartet Ace of Base, an idea succinctly proved through this inevitable mash-up of “Alejandro” and Ace of Base’s fifteen-year-old sound-alike “Don’t Turn Around” spliced together by award-winning Vegas DJ/ producer Morningstar.
Not only do both tracks own virtually the same backing track and melodic structure, allowing for near-seamless back-and-forth transitioning, but the concluding relationships depicted in both numbers nicely compliment eachother, the combined requests of “Don’t turn around/ Cause you’re gonna see my heart breaking” and “Don’t call my name/ Don’t call my name, Alejandro” helping add an entire new layer of brilliance to this appreciated novelty.
Swedish blog-pop royalty Robyn has popped her remixing cherry with this “Rakamonie” twist on El Perro Del Mar’s possessing Love Is Not Pop highlight “Change of Heart”, decorating it with her vocals and a low-key electro-pop touch that basically makes it sound like one of her own records.
To our ears, the original, with it’s marvelously-executed, retro-baked allure, is still the better version, but Robyn does a solid enough remixing job on “Heart” to inspire mild anticipation for whatever tinkerings she may provide for other artists’ catalogues in the future.
Swedish band O’Spada must spend their entire days repeatedly studying every single piece of funk, R&B and blue-eyed soul-pop vinyl that came to be in the early-to-mid-’80’s; that’s the only way to explain away how insanely on-point their exercises in that era’s sound are.
For their new single “Ten Strikes” the five-piece don’t venture too far away from the expertly-crafted pop-funk stylings that made this past summer’s debut “Time” such an instantly addicting trip back in time, giving frontwoman Julia Spada another spectacular wah-wah and synth-accented playground for her out-sized jazzy warblings to carouse in.
Reminiscent of early Prince, with a little Rick James, Hall & Oates and Nu Shooz thrown in, the beat holds a serious “Must Drop Everything & Boogie Right Now!!!” groove, and Julia adorning it with a lyric about how happy she is her man is finally giving her the boot after she’s cheated on him eleventy-million times (she was tired of coming up with lies, it seems) only makes it that much more of a pleasantry.
The go-to gal when it’s odes of heartbreak and loneliness dressed in twinkly, melancholic arrangements you crave to help get you through a gray-skied afternoon, Swedish songbird El Perro del Mar keeps chugging out that depressing bewitch-craft on “Change of Heart”, the first single off her latest collection, the recently-released-in-the-States EP Love Is Not Pop.
A bit musically denser than the twee orchestral seasonings that framed her previous works (yet still somehow still able to grasp her signature stamp of weightlessness), “Change” rides along a ’70’s rock-inspired soundbed of thickened bass grooves and echo-y guitar curlicues that drift in and out of a dream-like haze as Mar’s forlorn chirp mourns yet another dead-end romance.
It’s gorgeously transfixing stuff, an aesthetic brilliantly matched in it’s accompanying clip featuring the mesmerizing visuals of two golden-hued bodybuilders doing some amazingly slo-mo’ed performance art choreography.
Last fall/ winter, Sweden duo The Sweet Serenades “sweetly serenaded” many blogs-watchers with their fun and bouncy offering “Mona Lee”…and nearly a year later, they’re prepared to heat up the cold months all over again with this second addictive cut pulled from their Balcony Cigarettes album.
An indie-pop rhythmic rush that refuses to let up, “On My Way” charges out the gate packing an energetic blend of rumbling bass, stormy guitar bits, toms, cowbell and some overtime-working drum pounding as illustration for the intense sexual tension between singer Martin Nordvall and some sexy looker he’s hot on the heels of.
Urging her to “have a drink, put that red dress on” via a wiry croon that sounds half out of breath trying to keep up with the track’s rapid-paced power-pop tumble, Nordvall’s intent on snatching up his target by any means necessary, assuring her “I’m on my way” in a haunting falsetto vocal peak that’ll ring in your head long after the song has galloped into silence…at which point, you’ll hit “rewind” just to be swarmed by the track’s catchy goodness all over again.
Preview the rest of the Serenades’ output here or via the widget below (our favorite, the whistle-perked “Smack You Up”).
A couple months back, we introduced you all to Swedish band O’Spada and their bubbly ’80’s R&B/ new wave-inspired confection “Time”. That same post also mentioned a “Time” remixing contest, in which the winners would earn credit as a B-side contribution to the track’s official single release.
Well, the winning mixes were chosen (you can hear the top three here), but the band’s label (Despotz Records) has also granted us with the opportunity to share some of the runner-up compositions.
Out of the “close, but no cigar” bunch we offer our two favorites: the zippy, dance-tastic “L.A. Rush Mix” and the interestingly reggae/ jazz-tinged “35 Bag Mix”. (You can pick up the official winner, the “Suck Shaft Remix”, via Fader)
As nice as it is to get free music, think of how much better your soul would feel if you purchased it the old-fashioned way.
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(MP3 posts are for promotional and/ or previewing purposes only; if any artist or their representation wish to have the links removed, contact me and I will happily comply!)
Say what you will about Grey’s Anatomy not really being the “must-see” event it once was (we wouldn’t necessarily argue with you), but you got to admit, they still know how to alert viewers to great under-the-radar pop finds. “Die Young”, from (previously MM-approved) Swedish indie duo The Sweet Serenades, is one of the prime-time soap’s latest compelling scene-soundtrackers.
“It sounds like ABBA’s ‘Fernando’”. 
Swedish blog-pop royalty 
Swedish band 
The go-to gal when it’s odes of heartbreak and loneliness dressed in twinkly, melancholic arrangements you crave to help get you through a gray-skied afternoon, Swedish songbird 
Last fall/ winter, Sweden duo 
A
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