We have a couple of Tromsø artists to feature this next week, the first of whom I’ve been meaning to write about for ages. Vilde Bye  is a quietly compelling voice from northern Norway, and her track ‘ Bird Up a Tree’ is a lovely introduction. Now we’ve covered a few fairly heavy lyrical ideas recently, so an acoustic indie-folk song about a bird sitting in a tree really appealed to me the first time I heard it in a very busy train station a couple of weeks ago. Except of co

We’re generally trying to feature new releases, but we’re going to jump back a year to one I somehow missed, courtesy of Icelandic multi-instrumentalist Gisli Gunnarsson. Regular readers will know I take particular pleasure in writing about a multi-instrumentalist, for reasons I’ve never quite worked out. ‘ Árstíðir ’ was released this time last year and obviously we have previously featured the Icelandic chamber folk band Árstíðir’ name meaning “ Seasons ”, and if you’ve s

So the aim this weekend is to cover four Nordic post-rock releases. Yesterday it was After-Math. Today we return to a relatively new favourite, Swedish duo ÅHM . We’ve written about them recently, but this week they’ve released ‘ Eliana Never Sleeps’ , which immediately grabbed me with a blistering rush and an opening guitar riff that explodes into life. But unlike ‘ Broken Beam s’, which was coated in melancholy (if melancholy can, in fact, be applied like varnish), Eliana N

I was thinking about Sløtface a s i travelled into work last week thanks to passing Manchester Burger joint Burger Slut (who clearly haven't felt obliged to adjust their name to Burger Slot), and it was a timely reminder to check out their new releases ahead of their UK Tour. I'm particularly enjoying their 2026 sound, which has that extra edge and rawness to it. Clearly they're just enjoying releasing whatever they feel like, as shown by latest ' Demo ' releases, which in

Have you ever vibed to a song you wonder how it would sound when you listen to it whilst engulfed in a ‘shroom cloud?* I know that’s a wild intro but there’s no holding back to how I feel about Bellman’s “ She’s Reading Poe ”. Whilst we would obviously never encourage drugs, “ She’s Reading Poe ” kinda lures you into an immersive five…no, six-dimensional experience that makes you think the other way around anyway. The emergence of many new alternative bands makes shoegaze s

Unlike my idol Andy who has an extensive knowledge of all the musicians who we feature, I don’t. And I know that breaks all the rules in every writer’s guidebook, but I’d like to use that to our advantage. It’s fun blind reviewing a new song and basing all my ‘judgment’ merely on what I hear and feel, not on what I know about the artist. So with that said, today’s drug is Swedish duo Club 8 ’s new single, “ Echoes of our Time.” Dreamy, synth, slightly electronic, and very in

Alt-pop is not hard to love, especially those with really catchy upbeat melodies. For this day’s review, we’re jamming to Sweden-based solo OK Alva’s newest single, “Dust” . Like I said, alt-pop is easy to listen to. So when you’re like us who get pretty much immune to the all-too familiar beat of something we could all love, we dig deep at the lyrics. OK Alva is expressive. A pronounced, smooth voice paired with really pronounced diction, it’s easy to resonate with what she

This review holds two firsts: 1) it’s my first time reviewing for NMR in a long time and 2) it’s my first time hearing of The Dahmers . “ In the Dark ” is the band’s third and final single from new album “Creature Feature” which was released yesterday. Initially listening to “ In The Dark " and checking out their socials, I can already pick up what the whole appeal of the band is. They (probably) love horror, the occult, and they make good music. Although one thing I do stru

Of course, as I’ve said many times before, when I’m in charge of the Universe I will use my powers wisely to immediately legislate that any new artist / band has to name themselves in such a unique way that they’re easily found online and on Spotify - so I’m not searching through photos of hip replacement operations (Danish band Total Hip Replacement), endless pictures of fjords (Norwegian band The Fjords), and now Tax Incentivised Investment Schemes ( ISA of Sweden). But I

There are certain phrases that immediately feel familiar round here, and “ losing your grip on reality” is definitely one of them - as regular readers will testify. So it feels entirely appropriate that Misty Coast have returned with a song based around that subject: ‘ Hallucinating ’, focussing on that blurred space between clarity and confusion. It also arrived at the same time as Misty Coast (along with VEPS) were announced for Indiefjord Festival , pretty much our favou

I liked the new Rädslan track ‘ Offline ’ as soon as I heard it at the weekend. It’s energetic, raw, and driven with real purpose, but I also wasn't quite sure whether it belonged in our slightly skewed and weird universe. It is very focused and direct, and with the lyrics in Swedish I didn’t know if it was something which would quite resonate - lyrical content is always important to me. So, anyway, in a rare moment of actual diligence, I asked the band what the song was ab

I always have a bias for gentle indie folk music, so when Birds are better released his latest single ‘ Hymns for the Hope and the Sorrow’, I was pretty sure I’d like it. Fronted by Stian Fjelldal, Birds are better is an Oslo-based folk band birthed from the former’s desire to make music that he’d actually enjoy if he were a listener. This isn’t Stian’s first musical expression as he has been making music for many years (we briefly featured a previous album), even releasing

Regular readers will know, of course, that we discovered Pinegaze last week, a genre of music specifically aimed at Scandinavian musicians who spend their time starting slightly mournfully into a forest. It’s a genre cousin of Shoegaze , which we haven’t featured much so far this year, so we’re delighted to introduce Indonesian band Meraung, who’ve just released EP ‘ Change ’. Meraung , of course, means “roar”, with the band helpfully explaining to us that the name was chos

I found myself searching through sites like MetaCritic and AlbumoftheYear this morning to try and find new post-rock releases I might have missed, but couldn’t quite find anything that stirred my interest, so it was genuinely lovely to be sent the brand new single by Swedish band ÅHM this afternoon, whom I hadn’t come across previously. And having now spent some time with their earlier tracks, ‘ Broken Beam ’ feels like the most assured thing ÅHM have released so far. There’

We’ve really been treated this week. Firstly Major Parkinson presented their view of the apocalypse, all horns, grand ideas and the faint suggestion of a helicopter or three, and then NMR favourites Phogg arrive with their final track before the releases of their new album. And as ever, the first rule of Phogg Club applies: you never quite know what’s in the Phogg curiosity box until you open it. What’s inside this time is ' Tears' , and straight away we should acknowledge

If the apocalypse really was approaching, I’ve often wondered what the correct response would be. Panic buy pasta? Drive aimlessly and check into a slightly damp end-of-days hotel in Torquay with “ Sea View (Weather Permitting) ” on the sign, queue politely for a final ice cream, and buy a commemorative tea towel? Or maybe, and this feels increasingly sensible, the logical option would be to head to Norway to see a Major Parkinson live show, on the basis that if the world is

I wrote about noisy post punk outfit Green Tea Bitches earlier this week, and couldn’t help pointing out that we do spend a fair amount of time featuring artists that we love very much, but that do seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time staring slightly sadly into a pine forest. Of course I missed the obvious point that this should be a genre in its own right, a distant cousin of Shoegaze, known as Pinegaze (other Nordic tree species are available) and The Quiet No

So here’s a typical Nordic Music Review curiosity who’ve just released their debut track and probably haven’t been featured in many places. Green Tea Bitches are a Chinese / Danish electro post-punk outfit who seem to thrive on contradiction, describing debut track ‘ Bad Taste’ as either “really bad pop” or “really cool post-punk,” depending on your perspective. They’re also probably too Chinese for Denmark, too Danish for China, and too loud for almost everyone. But not for

I doubt whether Björn Yttling does too much sitting around watching the Swedish equivalent of ‘ Homes Under the Hammer’ on his weekday mornings. He is, of course, one-third of the (still touring) Peter Bjorn and John , seemingly produces about half of new Nordic pop releases, and has now re-awakened his Yttling Jazz project for the first time in over a decade — we suspect the man’s concept of “a quiet weekend” involves conducting a small orchestra in his kitchen. His latest

We haven’t quite reached the point yet where we’re President of the Universe, but when we are we’ll of course mandate a number of key Nordic Music Review principles — the first of which we’ve been advocating since 2014: that all bands must be easily Googleable, or that some kind of galactic-wide database exists purely for our purposes in finding them. Because trying to find those extra little snippets of info we like to know whilst researching Swedish West Coast band Wild Oce