Swedish~ Stereo~

Collaboration of Nause and Vincent Pontare "Hungry Hearts" is finally out!
The song has got a brand new video and was released as a single directly going to #1 on iTunes. "Hungry Hearts" leaked and was previewed before (there's no need to tell that instrumental version "Mellow" was released in the beginning of the year) so we knew what sort of Avicii-esque club thing we should expect and now you can check it in its full radio-edit.

Sara Varga's new single "Hur Gör Vi Nu" gets support of a nice summer video she presents today.
The song is currently #36 on iTunes but I have a feeling that the album, when it will be out, will go much higher. Wondering if other tracks will get a folk-touch? I wouldn't mind.

New dance-release from Cazzi Opeia sounds always exciting, this girl never disappoints (or disappears for a long time) and she adds another diamond to her wonderful singles-collection.
"With You" is a dance-track going quite in Rihanna's melodically, softly but straight growing to a big infectious pop-chorus, it's not that agressive like "Only Girl (In The World)" or "Where Have You Been" and more Swedish pop but basically it represents this direction very nice.
So it's already 5th Cazzi Opeia's single and I hope the album won't take too long.

Rockbjörnen-2012 awards were held today in Gröna Lund and though Loreen hasn't managed to appear there she has become a big winner of the night taking two prizes - Best female artist and Best song. Loreen fans has got something else interesting though. A small snippet of a new song from upcoming album that you can check below with a full list of winners. Oh! And we're also very glad to see Dead By April and Moa among winners!

Seems like Vacuum is coming back well prepared! First we've got a new single "I Loved You", then the video was premiered and now we have a pack of new remixes premiered on a band's youtube channel marked as "I Loved You - Retrixxed" (the official title of EP to come out? we don't know for sure).
While the first Vampir - Progglabb remix has become an electronic dance-track based on a very nice synth-sample enlightening the whole drama of the song, the second Vampir - BassRadar remix sounds like a more experimental, heavier electronic remix. I prefer the first but you can check both of them below.

New Agnes' album "Veritas" is out already next week, long-awated work is going to be released on October 5th and will be supported by another single "All I Want Is You" to be out this Friday.
Track has already arrived on the radio and you can check it below.
"All I Want Is You" is the result of Agnes' work with previous collaborators - Vincent Pontare has co-written "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" while Jonas Quant (the last Hurts' album producer) and Ana Diaz were working on "One Last Time". The song doesn't sound like any of those though, it feels like a light follow-up of "Release Me" with its strings meeting Florence + The Machine's shouting backing vocals and claps, catchy repetative chorus makes the song pretty attractive for radio-listeners so very soon we'll see if it can become as big as "One Last Time" has become durung the summer.

This year's Polar music prize ceremony has turned to a big tribute night of Paul Simon with different Swedish artists perfrming his hits. Ones we were interested the most were Laleh and Loreen and both were singing really nice and atmospheric covers of his songs with an orchestra that has surely made them even more beautiful.

Recently I told you about the project Lilla Sällskapet probably what I had to long ago. And now I'm back to another duo Erik Nordström is involved in - his collaboration with Mats Norman - Ansiktet.
Last year I was mentioning their single "X", since that guys have managed to make a #1 hit "Äckligt" and now do a follow-up which was already premiered on the radio today.
"För Stor" is a nice mix of synth-pop and that special (and very popular lately) genre called Swedish soul with a proper sing-a-long chorus. Hope it will also get a video soon, all of Erik's singles have and all are pretty worth watching.

Video for Dada Life's new single "Feed the Dada" hasn't taken long time to be unleashed and comes out in the same day with commercial release of the song.
You can always count on these guys when it goes about music video (even when they do some documentary club cut) and this is another really worthy work with an adrenaline level corresponding to the song which has got to #13 of local iTunes-chart during the day.

If you follow our Twitter and Facebook page you should know that Terese Fredenwall which I was writing about last weekend has won Svensktoppen Nästa and has got her ticket to Melodifestivalen!
We're officially glad and expect some really wonderful song from her.
Here you can check her performance in the final of Svensktoppen Nästa and convince yourself once again that the girl can sing and look great on the stage.

Dada Life's new single "Feed The Dada" I was writing about in July, the song co-written by grand team of Anton Hård Af Segerstad and Niclas Lundin, is finally released today and arrives on the radio.
Today Swedish radio was premiereing it and as you can hear the track is not any less massive than it promised to be in a snippet, crazy hit for two crazy club-maniacs!

After a pretty big break Melodifestivalen-2011 finalist Sara Varga comes back with a new album "Ett år av tystnad" she was working on with her boyfriend Lars Hägglund (mostly known to Swedish pop-fans as constant Melodifestivalen backing vocalist).
The album will be released in one day with Sara's book "Min inre röst" on September 12th and the first single "Hur Gör Vi Nu" is out already this Wednesday becoming soundtrack for a new film "Bäst före".
"Hur Gör Vi Nu" is right that acoustic Sara you could hear on a previous album but the song has got unexpectable folk-touch which works really nice while the song grows.

It's getting harder to surprise us with some new faces we didn't see on other shows this summer but still we have some nice artists we don't mind to watch once again. Darin has made an energetic performance of his summer single "Nobody Knows". David Lindgren and Miss Li have already performed latest singles. Sons Of Midnight were foreign guests of this week.

Miss Li - My heart goes boom
Dansmedley med Urban angels, P*erfect, Micina och Grounded
Hey baberibas - Dirty dancing
Sons of Midnight - The fire

This Sunday we're gonna get the first artist of Melodifestivalen-2013. One of Svensktoppen Nästa finalists will win the contest and get their place at MF next February as a prize. Currently artists competes with other songs that can only show their potential and out of these names our clear favorite is the girl we already heard about before.
Previously you could see Terese Fredenwall's name connecting to artists like Danny and Jenny Berggren she has written songs for, she was also performing with Jenny Berggren on one stage and you can check yourself what a star quality this girl has. The artist has already released three albums and here you can check her latest single "Hey You Middle Aged Married Man".
Terese takes part in Svensktoppen Nästa with a song "Drop The Fight" - beautifully growing ballad with a nice electronic touch and Terese's fragile vocal, the song which shows her songwriting skills really well.
We do hope we'll be celebrating Terese's victory tomorrow, this is the artist of Melodifestivalen league and she just must win!
You can also check other finalists here.

Sopot Festival is back! When it was an annual event every year we had at least few Swedish participants of the highest league - Agnes, September, Charlotte Perrelli, Ola, Velvet, Måns Zelmerlöw... This year we had only one but also quite famous participant - Eric Saade.
Eric has performed "Hotter Than Fire" in a full packed choreography and has won a whole thing (+ has taken a special prize from local radio)!
There's only bad quality camrip of his performance but I'll replace it with something better as soon as it'll appear.

Though Avicii's mix of "Superlove", the song from Lenny Kravitz's latest album "Black and White America" didn't seem to have a great promotion behind it was quite welcome in many iTunes-charts like it usually happens with Avicii's tracks.
Remix was released back in May and now it has got a video which is, along with coming weeekend, a worthy reason to remember about it.

Emilia presents another beautiful teaser from her upcoming album "I Belong To You" and this time it's a classic hit "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" performed by Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Michael Buble and many other artists.
Big news for us were that that the first single from the album - "Lost Inside" was delivered by Sharon Vaughn and Anders Hansson, the man behind some great hits of Alcazar, BWO, Lena Philipsson but this time Anders has made a step out of his comfortable dance-pop area to create something really beautiful but absolutely different, what we expect from a whole album in common.

This June Loreen has taken part in MTV World Stage concert in Göteborg making epic performance that we could only check by videos made from audience.
Now TV-footage is out and this is absolutely worthy watching. And re-watching. And re-watching again!

Earlier this year Man Meadow has presented their version of Ditte Marie's "Overflow" - song that participated in Danish Eurovision pre-selection. While initially we thought it's a cover guys have revealed in QX interview that firstly the song was written for them but both songwriters and performers couldn't be Swedish to enter selection so it was decided to give it to Danish singer.
Anyway guys don't give up on their Eurovision dream and will be trying to reach the contest one day. Currently they keep on working on new music and looking forward to shoot music video in New York this September. Here you can check recently premiered video for "Overflow".

Lately Petra "September" Marklund was mostly hidden from cameras and a huge Swedish public attention she had in 2011 after Så mycket bättre success. The reason is that she was in the studio recording new album with Kent's Jocke Berg. The album that was planned to be out already this year (October 24th is release date for now) under Petra's own name and to become a quite darker than September's music with references to a sound of Coldplay, Florence and the Machine and Depeche Mode.
While we're waiting for Petra's album here is the song she was working with Michel Zitron (Save The World, Jennie Let Me Love You, Fade Into Darkness, If Only You) and his constant collaborator Tobias Gustavsson.
Songwriting team has joined forces with the project Lissi Dancefloor Disaster from Uppsala and come out with a great electropop-gem "Singing My Heart Out" based on a Miike Snow-breathing keys leading us through an utterly dramatical tune creating a very dark and special atmosphere with Josefin's vibrating vocals.
If this is direction Petra Marklund currently goes in her own stuff I absolutely don't mind and can't wait for her new album even more impatiently.

Melodifestivalen-2010 winner is officially back, Anna Bergendahl presents the video for her comeback single "Live And Let Go" which was already premiered on the radio last week and the song is released on iTunes today, currently climbing up to #12 which is a very good sign that I hope will be supported by some TV-promotion.
Video has become very summerish, sad and beautiful as the song itself.

Niklas Bergwall has entered the world of Swedish pop as a part of songwriting/producing duo 2N (with Niclas Kings). He worked a lot with Kate Ryan in 00s, Charlotte Perrelli, BWO and September (who is currently Niklas' girlfriend) also recorded songs with Niklas. You can find a lot of mixes made by Niklas and now we've got a new absolutely brilliant one.
Unfortunately we know less about Niklas Hjulström, Swedish actor who was a releasing artist as a part of duo Cue since 90s. But we know that Cue have released a beautiful ballad "Don't Wanna Lie" in Broken Door's style of dramatic rocky pop-ballads. And now the ballad has got a remix treatment from Niklas Bergwall who has turned the track to an amazing dance-pop anthem which has got a video premiered today.

The Sounds's Maja Ivarsson is going to be a new star of Så Mycket Bättre show this Autumn. And we don't have a doubt Maja can easily shine without her band behind. Here is a small proof.
Earlier this year Canadian DJ Felix Catal has released a single "Tonight", nice electronic pop-track with Maja's vocals and lovely careless atmosphere. Video for the single has arrived last week and you can enjoy it below - without Maja but with her charismatic voice.

Not so much time has passed since Alesso's latest hit-release "Years" but we have another one coming out on August 27th.
Alesso's collaboration with "City Of Dreams" was also premiered live during this summer so you can find record of it on youtube and get a common impression. The track accordingly to the title is quite dreamy track with a heavy club-beat and massive infectious instrumental chorus. Definitely something to wait for!

Idol followers should remember Elin Blom who has taken part in 2010 edition with Andreas Weise and Linnea Henriksson.
Elin was one of our season's sweethearts who has also become judges favorite and the one we expected to have a lot of releases afterwards. Elin wasn't newcomer in music previously participating in Finnish Eurovision selection and MGP Nordic.
Anyway though Elin was performing new songs live after Idol (Under My Skin, Party On My Own) it has taken a time for a new single and here it is. "Kung Fu" is a playful pop-rock track in a light Pink's style, basically something Elin was initially about musically and what fits her image really well. So I hope this is the official start of Elin's active post-Idol releasing story.

Earlier this summer Danny Saucedo has presented his duo with Lazee "Shake That Ass", track that almost wasn't promoted at all and hasn't got a proper interest of the audience. Seems like team has lost a faith halfway and now dance-Danny is back with a new single "All In My Head" which was premiered at Rix Fm festival recently and though it's not of a highest quality we can realize that something really promising is coming up.
"All In My Head" sounds like a more mature mix of "Catch Me If You Can Me" and "Crash and Survive" with a dark anxious tune opening up in a big rave chorus. This is old good but properly updated Danny and fans of his music should be absolutely delighted with the song when it will be released.

I've got a great reason to remind you about Michael Feiner's single "I Do" I was writing about in March.
Final version of the song has become a wonderful The Attic-esque dance-anthem with emotional Caisa's vocals and super-happy chorus that we absolutely in love with.
"I Do" is already promoted during Michael's sets and now we can watch Caisa performing the song during one of gigs.

In the end of August debut Andreas Weise's album "Andreas Weise" should be released and as a sneak peek we've already got his single "Another Saturday Night" and the track "Shine" performed at Lotta på Liseberg.
This weekend Andreas has already premiered another song from the album - "Something Beautiful" which has become jazz-pop meets pop-rock sing-a-long happy track sounding a bit like jazzy brother of Andreas Johnson's "Lovelight".
Below you can watch performance of all three Andreas' songs in Nyhetsmorgon.

Andreas Weise - Another Saturday Night
Andreas Weise - Shine

Bosson keeps working on a fresh stuff and here we have probably his best late track sounding like Bosson's finally has switched to his completely new music-era.
Visiting Oriflame party in Minsk singer has performed a brand new track "10000 Feet" (that you can listen below at 46.48 along with a full gig that should come out soon in a proper HQ TV-format soon) sounding like potentially huge club-hit moving from a dramatical strings pop-verse to a big Avicii-piano summer chorus that should hopefully bring him back to the spotlight of radio stations.

Time for collecting some great mashups made lately by DJ Nicky, Fred Haze and Dr Pihl. Don't know if I should introduce original songs as all of them are already hits that you heard million times before. But how wonderfully Max Martin-penned "Wide Awake" fits Roxette's "Wish I Could Fly" probably has amazed me the most.

Sarah Dawn Finer's new single "Nu Vet Du Hur Det Känns" has gone right to #1 on iTunes this week. Good sign for the artist born on Melodifestivalen that she can be successful without participation in the contest. Does it mean that Sarah will be trying to get host position at Eurovision-2013 rather than to represent Sweden? I guess we'll see after her album release on October 30th.
Right now Sarah promotes her fresh single and along with it she has performed another new song "Balladen Om Ett Brustet Hjärta" in acoustic that you can listen below.

While Allsång season is over Sommarkrysset is still with us every Saturday.
Performances we were interested the most today were Isa we told about earlier with her loud debut "Bomb" this summer and Sara Li performing Whitney's cover solo! And Björn Ranelid was doing Allsång solo too. Herregud!
We've got Sara and Björn making "Mirakel" anyway.

Bo Kaspers Orkester - Världens ände
Björn Ranelid - Alläsning
Fibes Oh! Fibes - Goodbye to love
Bo Kaspers Orkester - Allt ljus på mig

Lotta and Måns have finished seasons of their summer TV-shows this week, anyway we still have three Sommarkryssets more and a bunch of great performances from Skansen and Liseberg to re-watch.
Except Sarah Dawn Finer's, David Lindgren's and Hagsätra Sport's performances I already told about I should mention wonderful Lena Philipsson's TV-comeback after her husband's betrayal that she has accepted very hard. Linnea Henrikson has got a green light from Christer Björkman to take part in next year's Melodifestivalen. Måns has shaven his beard right during the show. Gina Derawi with Justin Bieber's cover was already a big highlight of the concert in Skansen (she's curent favorite to host Allsång next year by odds if Måns will refuse).

Linnea Henriksson - Alice
Linnea Henriksson - Härligt härligt men farligt farligt
Christer Björkman och Lotta Engberg - Sånt é livet
Linnea Henriksson - Alice
Lena Philipsson - Stjärnorna
Petra Mede & Anna Granath - Peace 3007
Anders Lundin och Måns Zelmerlöw - Gå upp och pröva dina vingar
Måns Zelmerlöw - Änglahund

This year's schlager-newcomer David Lindgren keeps moving from one popular TV-show to another promoting not only his Melodifestivalen hit "Shout It Out" but also summer single "Rendezvous".
Just like in a case with "Shout It Out" pack of mixes for "Rendezvous" have arrived a bit later but has become a really bunch of dancefloor-fillers from Peet Syntax & Alexie Divello, Boondocks and Kevin Angel. You can check snippets of all tracks here and Peet Syntax & Alexie Divello club mix with David's performance at Lotta På Liseberg below.

David Lindgren - Just nu