Swedish~ Stereo~

Live premiere from our Idol-sweetheart Linnea Henriksson who has recently released a new single "Alice" and was invited to Gokväll last week to perform it live with a another previous single "Väldigt kär/Obegripligt ensam".
Linnea is always incredibly enjoyable live so we were really happy to (at least) virtually visit this mini-gig. Go girl!

Eric Amarillo who has delievered a hit-monster of 2011 "Om sanningen ska fram" is back for more, he has got a new track "Men Hallå! Vem bryr sig?" shared on his official Youtube-channel and it sounds like a great follow-up of his first solo-album released last autumn.
"Men Hallå! Vem bryr sig?" seems to be a bridge between The Attic's sound that you could feel very well on Eric's album and this year's Avicii trend of big piano ragged chords, catchiness and beautiful melodics is still (like always) included so this song can become a strong Eric's comeback.

Wonderful The Voice-alumni Helena Gutarra who has recenly made a solo-debut with a single "Tongues Of Fire" that we immediately mentioned here on blog premieres a party-video for it.
This is pretty 80s, low-budget, crazy but funny enough and the song is still absolutely amazing so if you've missed a release of Helena's single consider youself as a lucky person as you won't miss it this time.

Vacuum unleashes a teaser of a brand new video, the first in 8 years!
The last one was shot in 2004 for the single "They Do It" from the album "Your Whole Life Is Leading Up To This" - probably the darkest and the purest electronic album in project's discography. Initially Vacuum was presented as a synthpop-band but they seemed to never sound so heavy synth-inspired like on this album. Further singles like "Six Billion Voices", "Walk On The Sun", "Black Angels" has brought band to experimental pop-area not directly attached to any definite direction and to a frequent flirt with acoustics but now it looks like they bring the atmosphere of "Your Whole Life Is Leading Up To This" back.
In the first seconds of upcoming band's single "I Loved You" you can start thinking it's a piano-based track of "Know By Now" family right before it instantly turns to a dark piece of heavy electronic sound with a haunting echo of Mattias' voice somewhere in the depths. Very promising snippet and as the more views it'll get the sooner we'll listen to a full verion don't hesitate to spread it.

Two months ago we were writing about Stormby's Remix of "Euphoria", the first proper remix coming out for this track so fast - even sooner than official pack. Now Stormby has come up with another great mix for another Melodifestivalen entry of this year - Ulrik Munther's "Soldiers", which hasn't also got any official mixes yet (update: thanks to Being Blogged I've found out that actually official mix was released two days ago but I like Stormby's one much more), so we hope Ulrik's label will think about making this one official.
Stormby's remix has become big, poppy and sounds exactly like MF classic mix should sound (I mean you can go dubstep, you can make acoustic versions but schlager-season would be just wrong without such properly schlageristic mixes like this), it also contains an utterly cool military drum intro. You can check whole new Stormby's Swe Pop compilation Ulrik's mix was included in, one hour of the best fresh Swedish dance-pop you absolutely will like.

In new episode of Kvällen är din we've got some new dreams coming true with the help of two amazing Idol veterans - Darin and Sibel.
Darin was singing his old hit "Homeless" in duo with Gry (also performing his new single "Nobody Knows") and Sibel has recorded a song with Petra who dreamed her own song to be performed by some celebrity. Check what has become out of it.

Basshunter's video for the newest single "Northern Light" hasn't taken too long to be unleashed in its full length.
Last week we've got tv-performance, acoustic version and teaser and now it's here and Aylar who played a main character in many previous Basshunter's videos is back!

If you think Erik Emanon's reminds you something you are attentive reader of Swedish Stereo and remember that I mentioned him as a remixer working on Mimi Oh's single "Säkerhetsnål".
Now Erik starts his solo-career and his debut single "Breaking Love" was premiered with a video that you can already watch below.
"Breaking Love" is a pretty special track, it's a ballad with a slight r'n'b-influences and heavy dubstep-sound. I'm pretty sure that this sort of dubstep-ballads has a big (and very close) future so it was pretty smart to release this track in such a right time when this trend just starts being popular. Erik sounds good and looks appealing so probably we have a new Swedish pop-star on the way?

Sweet nostalgic hello from 90s. Dr. Alban relelases brand new single "Loverboy" on May 21 and here we get a sneak peek of it.
Not that Dr. Alban was completely out of music stage all these years, the biggest highlight for us was his duo with Starclub/Daisy "Chiki Chiki", since that he has released the album "Back to Basics" that hasn't charted in Sweden but has given the artist a new stuff to make tour in Eastern Europe where he's still remembered well. Now Alban has prepared some fresh music and recently he has premiered the first new track "Freedom" on TV4 that wasn't promoted so much afterwards. Instead we have another track "Loverboy" which sounds exactly like 90s Dr. Alban with updated production and (always) cool backing vocalists.

Though Ola Svensson's latest album was released in the end of 2010 and he had just a one year to promote it, he has already started to tease fans with news about recording fresh stuff in 2011 and today we've got a premiere of a brand new single "I'm In Love" that was presented on P3 radio and will be digitally available on May 7th.
"I'm In Love" was co-written by Shellback and you can definitely feel a man behind "Moves Like Jagger" and "I Wanna Go" in production of the track, it goes pretty in the same pop-vein but with Ola's own style, mood and manner that you can't mix up with anyone else's (maybe "Moves Like Jagger" meets "Riot" will describe it the best way?). Energetic comeback from one of our Swedish pop-heroes and now we're even more hungry for a new stuff!
Video for "I'm In Love" is already shot and soon we're also gonna get its premiere but now skip at 45.30 and enjoy.

Country-past and country-present of Melodifestivalen - Cookies n Beans and Abalone Dots relelase new albums almost at the same time. Abalone Dots have already presented their "Chocolate & Cigarettes" last week but as we didn't check it yet let's talk about the first girls.
Though taking part in MF-2009 hasn't brought a big success to the band the album "Big, Borrow and Steal" released afterwards has entered Top-10. Swedish audience has praised these sweet ladies with original voices and they pay back with another album "Go Tell The World" to be out on May 2nd.
The first single from it that was already premiered on the radio is "The First Step", very calm and kind example of European melancholic acoustic pop with very touching vocal line, you can still feel country-influences but not as much as you'd expect.

We stayed apart from the project iamwhoiamwhoami quite long trying to find something that will catch us not just visually but musically and feels like we've found it.
iamwhoiamwhoami was set up as multimedia-project with Swedish singer Jonna Lee behind it presenting quite bizarre electronic music stuff through a series of online videos full of not less bizarre images.
Project has got support of London D.E.F. Artist Management previously working with artists like Fever Ray, The Knife, Robyn and the debut album will be released this June. Here's one of the latest videos - utterly captivating "in due order" with its dancing hairy monsters and Jonna moving in the dark haunting beat with the image reminding Lamb's "B-Line". And another one - adorable dreamy electropop "idle talk" presented just yesterday but musically has won us over directly.

As it was expected after the latest Så mycket bättre season Laleh has become an absolute sweetheart of Sweden this year. During 12 weeks after its February release Laleh's album "Sjung" was leaving Top-5 only once and is back to #1.
The first single from the album "Some Die Young" hasn't just entered Top-10 but also has become a hit across Scandinavia (current #1 of Norwegian iTunes and you can find Loreen at #2 by the way). And here we have another single that can be not less hit. "Vårens Första Dag", light melodic indie-pop song that you're gonna like if you've fallen for Laleh's cover of "Ängeln i rummet", has got its wonderful video which was premiered today and you can watch it right now.

Collaboration of Avicii and Salem Al Fakir "Silhouettes" goes weirdly slow, first time the track has appeared online last spring and now seems like it's finally approved as the new single as here we've got a video for it.
The video is not about plot, it's just Avicii on a one-night club-trip flying from party to party but it creates very nice magic atmosphere with this beautiful song.

Wonderful news for Danny Saucedo's fans! Danny's new album has got a preliminary release date - July 1st so it's not that long to wait but still while waiting the artist has presented another goodies pack.
Yesterday compillation of "Amazing" versions was released digitally (almost 2 months after Melodifestivalen's unleashing songs date is a bit late but absolutely not too late) and it has included 2 mixes - from Trinity and Maison & Dragen (extended and radio Version), both tracks are pretty untrivial. When the first one is based on dubstep-sound, not too heavy for not a fan of this genre the second one wins the listeneer by live drums giving the track light stadium feeling in verses moving to a big club choruses. You can also find beautiful acoustic version of "Amazing" in this pack.

H.E.A.T's new album "Address The Nation" has become a really good compillation of classic AOR-sounding tracks with pretty charming 80s rock vibes and Erik Grönwall definitely feels very comfortable in this area with his screaming rock-vocal. I don't think that either old H.E.A.T's or Erik's fans will be dissapointed, I'll convince you too talking about some good tracks later.
But for now we've got a brand new video for the first single "Living On The Run", big rock party video that's going to promote release of the album that has already managed to make debut in Top-10, to fall down to #49 next week and rises again. We're gonna hope for a wave of speculations of H.E.A.T making comeback to Melodifestivalen next year. And we'll be hoping they'll do it till the last name announced. By the way you can watch the video below.

Broken Door's debut album "Time For Changes" is going to be released this week and as a big promo to this band premieres video for their latest single "Time For Changes" we wrote about recently.
Big and wonderful tune is one of multiple ones ("In The Shadow (Sunday Morning)", "Angel", "Hey You", "Beauty Comes From Within") which were already presented before and have proved Broken Door's big potential to create some wonderful pop-rock stuff with Swedish melodics and expressive sound.
We can't wait to hear the rest of the tracks and you should check the one that can become the best one on the album.

Leaving his sales records in 2011 Eric Saade is hardly busy on a big tour he's making around Sweden, seems like his audience is more than pleased and Eric is not going to stop recording process but has a temporary pause with new releases.
Though he always can take part in some other artist's stuff what he has actually done recording a new track with Norwegian Tone Damli who has become pretty popular after she has become #2 with the song "Butterflies" in MGP-2009 right after Alexander Rybak.
These days Tone releases a new album "Looking Back" and it contains the song "Imagine" co-written by Eric with his constant collaborators - J-Son, Jason Gill and Leslie Tay. It's pretty summerish in Baby Alice's "Piña Colada Boy" eurodance-way and produced in a recognizable style of Eric's latest albums so fans of Mr. Saade are going to be pretty happy to get this fresh piece of his music.

Yes!!! New video for the latest Linda Sundblad's single "Hur Kan Jag Sakna Nåt Jag Aldrig Haft" is finally out!
When did we have the latest one? Three years ago when Linda has presented the first single "2 All My Girls" from her "Manifest" album so in a quite long time but finally we've got a new visual treat.
Video rolls around Linda in some dancing hall with the guy who is definitely not keen on dancing, no, he can lift Linda in the air beautifully so we probably forgive him for overdramatizing things and after all Linda has enough of energy to make dance routine for both and inhale a lot of life, charm and action into the video. I already wrote and will do once again, this is wonderful single and when the album will be out it will one of the biggest highlights in Linda's career!

Love Generation's ex-participant Mikaela who performs now under the name Coco and who we introduced you to few months ago after she has presented her debut solo-single "Music is turning me on" has prepared a new track "Watch Your Bitch" and this time she tries some different music area.
When the first track was more about a flirt with eurodance sound, "Watch Your Bitch" feels more r'n'b in Rihanna's way, something which is not so popular among Swedish artists but this track definitely has a level and Coco has a courage to try new images and music styles so it definitely turns exctiting to follow her career.

Two years after his last brilliant single "Saturday" (and you should also remember his OST for previous Big Brother season "Fest i hela huset" ) Basshunter is back with a new song "Northern Light", he has premiered video teaser today, has performed the track live at UK KOKO Pop TV-show and you can also check a snippet of acoustic version, so you can realize what the track is about.
Surprisingly Basshunter hasn't just come back to his own roots, the song sounds like a classic Swedish pop of mid-00s with a huge Da Buzz-feeling before it's turning to a club-sound of Basshunter's first album. How good can this combination work in 2012? We're gonna know very soon!

Loreen who has become #1 in Finland right after her Melodifestivalen victory was invited to perform "Euphoria" at The Voice of Finland today - foreign promo-trip that can be her the only before Eurovision according to Expressen, seems like it's not in priority of label and after watching the show I think it's not fair as it has really won the audience directly. With just a strings orchestra playing in the begining and Loreen leaving all choreography out and concentrating on vocals with a proper lazers work performance has become not any less emotional, goosebumps-giving and breathtaking than it was at Melodifestivalen. The audience and juries have praised the singer with standing ovations.
Yesterday "Euphoria" has become #1 in Lithuanian iTunes chart (after Estonia), keeps quite long in Top-10 in Norway and Finland and spreads on the radio in other countries.

New season of Martin Stenmarck's show "Kvällen är din" where people can make their dream come true has started again. A dream of young Hampus was to sing with Lena Philipsson and Lena has made a duo with him also performing her latest amazing single "Du Följer Väl Med?". Last week you could already watch Jakob Samuel presenting his new solo-track "Stars and grace" and Nanne doing AC/DC's cover "Thunderstruck" from her latest tribute-album "My Rock Favourites". Now you can watch it all below.

Rebecca Stella's new single "Give Me That O" growing on us from very good to one of this year's best Swedish dance-tracks so far has become an immediate success. Right after release it has reached Top-5 on iTunes and is still there.
Today we can also watch premiere of music video where Rebecca presents a series of futuristically fashionable images and if you've missed this song before, you absolutely shouldn't this time!

Erik Hassle's newest single "Stay" released just few days ago has got a video which has turned to be a dark minimilistic but atmospheric projection of Roy Andersson's movie "En kärlekshistoria" cut on Erik's body.
You can currently find "Stay" in iTunes Top-20, Erik's stuff never gets released unnoticed.

Something fresh and really-really good from Linda Sundblad.
The artist has recently presented brand new single "Hur Kan Jag Sakna Nåt Jag Aldrig Haft" - electropop-gem sounding like the most mainstream and straight-forward representative of what new Linda Sundblad's stuff is about.
Song will get a video unleashed soon and you can already see a picture from it above. Today you can also download new remix of the song from Danish duo Pitchshifters, huge anthemic track not breaking its wonderful pop-core but properly pumping it up for summer dancefloors with a trendy club-sound.

Markoolio gets ready for a summer season and after his recent release "Borta bra men hemma bäst" he presents a new video for another fresh track "En vecka i Phuket" which also sounds as a pretty classic Markoolio summer-tune, happy, simple and sing-a-long. And you can always rely on Markoolio when you need some big, messy and funny video, he always does it with a big amount of self-irony which is actually one of the best things about Markoolio.

Ex-Sunblock Rebecca Stella has got into our spot in 2010 with delicious electropop-gem "Swag In A Bag" - track that has unfairly become goodies for Internet-community rather than mass public.
Two years after Rebecca is coming back with the fresh dance-track and this time it's much more straightforward, dynamic and powerful single "Give Me That O", absolutely 2012, jumping, crazy and catchy as hell track of RedOne-level that should (and hopefully will) work well on the dancefloor and on the radio.

Stockholm hip-hop band Panetoz has delivered hot summer track "Dansa Pausa" which currently keeps rolling in iTunes Top-10 and has a chance to stay actual whole season.
African rhythms, which are the biggest source of inspiration for Panetoz, and Swedish hip-hop are surprisingly united into a big caribbean party track from "Waka Waka" family representives of which usually are undeniably charming and uplifting when the summer breath is already in the air. It has also got a nice video that you can check below.

One of the most successful MF-2012 debutants David Lindgren prepares new album and this week he has shared a photo in studio with Fredrik Kempe that gives us a hope for some wonderful pop-collaborations on it. The album will be out on May 15 and we keep enjoying David's single which is still in the top of Swedish chart. Here's fresh mix of "Shout It Out" from WeSmile and Alexie Divello which is going to be released soon.

New wonderful indie-pop alert! Linköping's band The Majority Says was built pretty long ago - since 2005 they've managed to change the name, vocalist and to release 4 EPs - the latest one "Best Night Ever" has recently been released and has included four of band's latest tracks - "Trouble", "Dance To The Beat", "Kings Of The Night" and "114". Soft melodic indie pop with Hanna Antonson's sweetest soft vocal wins Scandinavia over, you can find new single "114" in Danish and Norwegian iTunes-charts (apart from Swedish one). I recommend you to check all of these songs though, it's a really special discovery in the area you probably thought you know everything about.

The second Alex Saidac's single "Stay In This Moment" she was teasing us with in November interview was digitally released in Sweden today!
Alex described new song as a move from dance-music to a pop-side and now we realize what she means. "Stay In This Moment" is actually not directly a dance-track but it still dancey enough and feels like something in a vein of Britney's last album but performed with Avril's wild expression, poppy and crazy. We could call it Saidac-party style.
Single was released with 9 remixes from Soundfactory, Wideboys, WAV, Christian Davies and Curveball, grand pack that you can get a sneak peek of in a sampler below, and original version has already entered Top-10 of Swedish iTunes and hopefully gonna keep attracting attention of foreign listeners.
You can also check full original version of the track skiping at 01.31.48 in a widget below.

Remember Erik Hassle performing brand new song we couldn't find anything about last Christmas?
It has turned to be actually a new single that was promoted few months before its release and now it's finally out.
"Stay" is written with Malin from Niki & The Dove (by the way did you know about duo "Who's gonna walk you home" guys have recorded together before?) but surprisingly there's no hint on electronic experimental sound of Malin's project, the song is pretty minimalistic and soulful piano-based ballad, quite enjoyable and delivering all Erik's vocal expression he's able to in choruses.

After summarizing 2011 in "Our Youth, Pt.1" EP and taking part in recent Lucas Nord's single "Let Us Stay Young" last year's Swedish discovery Urban Cone releases new song "We Should Go To France".
If you like Urban Cone's debut single "Urban Photograph" you should also fall for careless atmosphere of this light electronic indie-track.

Though I rarely write about dansband, it's not my genre, sometimes I can make exceptions when it's good enough and when it's the band some schlager-icons like Kikki Danielsson and Charlotte Perrelli have started their career from.
I mean comeback single of Wizex - "Simsalabim" from their upcoming album to be out in May. Band exists since 1973 and in 2006 it has got a new breathe with new vocalist Anna Sköld (backing singer of Alcazar and Shirley Clamp at Melodifestivalen). I don't know what makes this track so especially charming - ABBAesque piano, catchy and simple chorus or retro-schlager nostalgy but you definitely should check it.
By the way about our all-time dansband-favorites CC & Lee. CC has started working in a new band The True Spirits and you can check a piece of their new single "How Can You Love Me" here.

New J-Son's single "Mr Feelgood" has arrived to be premiered on Swedish radio.
As you know J-Son was actively involved in songwriting work on Eric Saade's latest stuff, almost all tracks on "Saade Vol. 2" and "Mr Feelgood" sounds like J-Son's own adaptation of what he was making for Eric but gone through his artistic prism where all electropop-vibes replaced wth J-Son's hip-hop background. According to the title the single is actually feelgood example of r'n'b-pop, quite summerich and sing-a-long.

Here comes the big tasty piece of Swedish club-music from Charlie Vallely and TERRI B.
Brand new single "You Are Not Alone" feels pretty Avicii-influenced which promises to be a trend of this season when in 2010-2011 it was more about Swedish House Mafia in local club-music. The track is very well produced example of this genre containing worthy vocal line and big ambitions to big one of this summer hits.

21-year-old Miriam Bryant was born in UK but raised in Sweden what has given us a wonderful reason to write about fresh music from this interesting new musician.
Miriam is a fresh face in Swedish music but she was working on her debut single "Finders, Keepers" with Victor Rådström who stands behind Thomas Stenström's recent release "Detsamma" (Thomas is new Roxy Recordings indie-artist if you've missed him).
"Finders, Keepers" a big dramatic song from "Rolling In The Deep" family, something that requires a huge vocal attitude and Miriam has it, epic growth of tune gives a slight feeling of Adele/Clare Maguire stuff which is definitely a good compliment to a young singer who is already getting to the spot and can become a worthy follower of Amanda Mair's path this year.

In the beginning of 2011 Denise "DeDe" Lopez has come up with a wonderful dance-project Swedish Angels she has started with Jennifer "another Jennifer Lopez" Lopez, Niklas Pettersson helped girls with the debut single "Swedish Angel" and after that the project has taken a releasing break. DeDe has become a mom to a little Marlon but she is back to club-star career now.
Brand new single "Your World Is Mine" is another dance-track (also co-written by Niklas Pettersson) but going in a pretty different direction, when debut single followed Swedish club-trend 2011 "Your World Is Mine" feels much poppier. This is Swedish dance-pop in its best with definite references to previous Niklas' works - Dilba's "Try Again" and some Daisy's stuff. Below you can check part of this track which is enough to realize what full version is about and to fall for it completely.

Swedish The Voice show finishing with the victory of (our Idol-favorite) Linda Varg's boyfriend Ulf Nilsson has started to give some promising results. Participated artists start presenting their new post-show releases and the first one is Helena Gutarra.
Previously Helena was the vocalist of LaPuma - rock-band we were following but also expecting release that will catch us for real and looks like it is here.
Helena has written a new song "Tongues Of Fire" with LaPuma's guitar player Torbjörn Gjers and it sounds like a modern "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" in Robynesque heavy electropop production and utterly expressive vocal with hit-breathing choruses. Really special combination with a big potential.

Some bad news for those who have got to watch daily live performances in TV4's Nyhetsmorgon, management has decided to get rid off them during working days and invite artists only at weekends. Still we have loads of TV-shows to get some music goodies from.
For example Sanna Nielsen has become a guest of Bingolotto performing very nice cover of Neil Young's "Heart Of Gold" with a string orchestra behind. Ulrik Munther was another guest singing his MF-entry "Soldiers".

Pontus Hagberg has become a big name for Swedish pop-fans in 00s under the name Evan after releasing a series of stuff presenting pretty special mix of epic tunes, electronic sound and original voice. Two albums, two participations in Melodifestivalen (as an artist and as a songwriter of Thérèse Andersson's song) and loads of not trivial poptastic stuff.
Evan has come back in 2010 with the compilation "Bonustracks" including new single "Fall From Grace" bringing back electropop-side of Evan flowing in waves of his dreamy vocals. The most of "Bonustracks" songs were already heard by fans before but Evan didn't keep them waiting for some fresh music to come. He has released new album "The Beauty of Your Face" this year and the first single "Out Of Control" has got the video that you can watch below.
By the way you can check snippets of the album here and you can notice Evan's own version of "Do You Really Wanna Love", the song rejected at Melodifestivalen in 2008-2009 and released by Michalis Hatzigiannis later.