Noisey's Top Swedish Premieres of 2015

It’s been a pretty decent year for Swedish music. As expected, Sweden’s done the legacy of ABBA proud and pumped out its fair share of club-ready and impeccably produced electro pop. That’s no surprise (although it’s still a very welcome dose of ear candy). However, Sweden’s gone above and beyond that standard this year: we’ve also had some punk-trap (yeah, that’s a thing now), some lo-fi bedroom jams, some ghoulish garage rock and some politically-charged alt rock float into our ears and shock our senses into something wicked. Yeah, there was a lot of good stuff, but life isn’t fair and we’re not about to burden you with a list of 80+ songs—so we narrowed it down to our handful of favourites. Behold: here are our Top Swedish Premieres of 2015.

Now we’re not about to pretend that we’re the least bit well-versed in whatever punk-trap is, but after hearing this track from Nomad, we’re pretty down to become experts. If an angry middle finger sticking it to authority could talk, “Fakka Me Mej” is what it would sound like. Brutal and adrenaline-pumping, it’s a song that kinda makes you wanna light shit on fire—and after watching the video where people do just that, that seems like an even better idea.

As soon as you hear the term ‘psych’, you might think of music that tries to make you feel like you’re smoking weed whilst sprawled naked in some field in the 60s. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s easy for psych bands to fall back on that trope—which is why we were pretty refreshed to hear this debut from Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation. Yeah, it’s psych-influenced—but it’s also rooted in trip-hop inspired production, fuzzed-out guitars and even post-punk darkness. Despite the divergent influences, the collection of eight songs gallops forward with the momentum of wild horses (fitting, considering the name of the album)—which makes this debut feel refreshingly organic and pretty damn memorable.

A lot can go wrong when you call yourself a lo-fi producer. You can end up sounding like a wannabe Mac DeMarco, or at least people will think you’re going to sound like that even before they hear your stuff. Luckily for Century of Ecstasy - the moniker of a certain Joakim Persson - he blew all those apprehensions out of the water with his track “Tonight”. Introspective, melancholic and warm, "Tonight" is a song that makes you feel like you're letting go and sinking into your own thoughts. Coupled with the loose vocals and the shimmering tumble of a pace, it's darkly romantic yet almost effervescent—and with a setting as beautiful as Pere Lacahaise in the video, that doesn’t sound so bad after all.

Sometimes, it feels pretty great to stop being a music snob for two seconds, embrace your inner basic and rave to Kygo in your room. Don’t worry: Sameblod’s EP is a lot better than Kygo, but it makes you feel that distinct sense of giddy excitement all the same. Nostalgia is a sparkly and bubbly collection of dance pop that makes you wanna shake your head and maybe experiment with blue eye shadow again 'cause you feel fifteen and free. Each of the five songs offers momentum that's kind of like bubble-gum: sweet, addictive and a little bit nostalgic— so pull on a tube top, paint glitter on your fingernails and relive your teen years with Sameblod.

Swedish/Australian electro-pop wizards Kate Boy gathered quite a lot of hype this year. After releasing bangers like "Midnight Sun" and receiving praise from the likes of Pitchfork, V Magazine and Interview Magazine, expectations were ultra-high for their debut album, One. So when we got to premiere the album before it dropped, we all gave out a big, collective sigh of relief—because One surpassed all our expectations. The entire album feels like a sassy slap in your face that propels every little inch of your body to the dancefloor. From the upbeat, happy vibes of "Midnight Sun" to the deep electronic groove in "Human Engine", Kate Boy made an album that pretty much guarantees to glue a catchy hook in your head for weeks on end. Let's just say that listening to this made us whip out dance moves we didn't even know we were capable of.

Nicole Sabouné’s “Bleeding Faster” kind of feels like a funeral procession, except one you actually really want to be a part of. The song is equal parts sublimely dark and somber, yet it’s also quite beautiful; Saboune’s vocals sound like an even loftier and more heartwrenching version of Siouxsie Sioux, which goes all too well with the song’s disturbing twang that's more than a little reminiscent of The Brian Jonestown Massacre. “Bleeding Faster” is one of the most bittersweet and visceral songs we heard all year, so please—go ahead and indulge your morbid senses.

If we were handing out awards for ‘video that does the best job of making you feel like you’re a kid watching Scooby Doo on a Saturday morning eating cereal’, The Dahmers' “Howling” would win by a landslide. Taking the primitive energy of punk, adding the devil-may-care giddiness of garage and sprinkling in some trippy werewolves, The Dahmers made a groovy and giddy number that’s as fun as it is fierce. It’s a song/video combo that makes you feel all retro and rowdy—so grab your buds, grab some brews and hit the road with this spooky little addition.

Gotta say, it’s pretty hard not to get down with any catchy tune which has a chorus that goes “Du du du du, du du du du.” Thankfully, this song from Grammy-nominated Swedish band Samling is so much more than that: the band keep their warm, folkish touch throughout, but add a dark and whimsical spin thanks to lofty, brooding lyrics. Nevertheless, it still has that retro, devil-may-care feeling to it—which is pretty much guaranteed to induce a ‘shroom-like giddiness. We’re never ones to say no to a psychedelic experience, so…

Patagonia’s Oracle EP was the first body of techno we heard come out of Sweden this year that sounds more like a crumbling warehouse in Berlin than a polished club in Stockholm. There's no veneer of light or easy listenin' here: the EP is genuinely dark and trance-like—recalling the heavy dub/techno vibe of Berlin heavyweights like Basic Channel or the pulsating smoothness of Marko Fuerstenberg. That combination makes Oracle strike a balance between stuff-that-makes-you-wanna-party and stuff-you-can-chill-to—so now you pretty much have no option but to listen to it.

Könsförrädare is probably the most genuinely politically-motivated band we were introduced to this year. It’s not so much that they’re blatantly in your face about it; it’s more that there’s this bloodcurdling intensity and shrillness to their music which can’t go unnoticed—especially when you learn more about the exact type of politically-aware commentary they’re making. “Blood Rush” was our first proper taste of that this year and it landed somewhere in between indie rock and post-punk coupled with a video featuring a youthful inferno of nice, sterile Nordic kids transformed into feral, bloody rocking zombies. Bloody badass, we think.

2015 was the year that Dolores Haze stole our hearts. After all, they're a group of chicks who look and sound like what The Spice Girls would have turned into if they'd skipped class, smoked cigarettes and gone riding in cars with older boys. That's pretty irresistible in itself—not to mention what happens when you couple that with some equally irresistible tunes. “Touch Me” was the first single we heard from their debut album, The Haze is Forever, and it really whet our appetites for more. Grooving and deliciously dark, it's a track driven by breathy and melancholic vocals that surge into cathartic energy with every chorus. Listening to it effectively plunged us into the middle of our very own imaginary epic montages—and for a regular ol’ work day, that's pretty good news.