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The ascending star of Icelandic music, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Laufey is straight out of a twinkling Nordic fairytale. And the spell she casts is one spun from jazz-inspired, heartrending songs, that rack up millions of views with every coy TikTok missive. This week, she releases her sophomore album Bewitched.
Over oat milk lattes in Los Angeles, Laufey (pronounced “lay-vay”) opened up on everything from her unconventional upbringing, to her fashion aspirations and relationship wins and woes, rife with all the plotlines that make for her signature lovelorn hooks. “Everybody’s falling in love and I’m falling behind” she sings on her debut album, Everything I Know About Love. But today, she’s found her groove as Gen-Z’s resident emo-jazz romanticist.
Born in Reykjavik to Chinese mother who played violin in the local symphony and Icelandic economist father with a taste for Chet Baker, Laufey Lin Jónsdóttir and her identical twin sister were raised on an rich musical diet of big band standards, orchestral numbers, and classical string sonatas. By age four she was playing piano, soon swapping the free-spirited Icelandic summers of endless daylight for cello band camp in Beijing. “I m so thankful my mom pushed me to practice and instilled that kind of discipline,” she says. “I m still riding off of that foundation, stamina, and technique to this very day.”
By her early teen years, Laufey reached the final rounds of Icelandic televised singing contests; she was the youngest competitor in Iceland’s The Voice. She didn’t win, watching from the sidelines as fellow contestants were plucked for plays, television, and film projects. “It felt so stark. Like somehow, I wasn’t special,” she says.
“Letter To My Thirteen Year Old Self,” off her latest album, is a particularly poignant musical throwback to the Laufey she once was. “Pretty little blonde girls around me were having their first kisses and whispering together in gym class. I just remember feeling so incredibly out of place and different,” she says. “I wanted to be a singer, but I didn t feel beautiful enough. I ve always had this deep voice and it just made me feel really old and different.” These hangups weren’t helped when one of the talent shows deemed her “the 14 year old girl with a voice of a 50 year old divorced woman.” “With that song, I wish I could go back to that version of myself and give her a hug. And say everything’s going to be okay,” Laufey says. “The things that I was worried about are the reason I have my career today.” They also earned her the prestigious Presidential Scholarship to Berklee College Music, where she grew into her distinctive rich alto register (typically the second lowest for a female vocalist) and deep vibrato. Today, she’s drawn comparisons to everyone from torch songstress Julie London and The Queen of Jazz Ella Fitzgerald, to admirer Billie Eilish—who shared Laufey s acoustic cover version of Eilish s “Happier Than Ever.”
Laufey’s nostalgic sound combined with her off-hand phrasing gives her a charming frisson. She throws in modern-day expressions such as “awkward silence” or “blah blah blah” on her most-streamed song, the bossa nova bop “From The Start.” This might veer into overly kitsch territory if it wasn’t so self-aware. “My songs are old sounds with modern lyrics,” she says. “At the end of the day, I m making music for Gen Z. I speak and act very much in that way. A lot of jazz standards have very casual language of that day, and I write with the casual language of my day.”
Like all jazz greats, her pain is poetic. On Bewitched, it is at its most devastating on “California and Me” when she sings of abandonment.“The mountains of LA will weep through the night / Driving down sunset s a terrible sight,” she sings. “Left me and the ocean for your old flame / Holding back my tears, I couldn t make you stay.” In short, long distance relationships are tough to navigate, but rife with good material. “I seem to like dating boys that don t live in my city,” she says. “It makes it easy to write about when you have that longing. I m not going out of my way to experience heartbreak for the sake of writing, but it always finds its way to me.” On “Promise,” another standout from the new album, a romantic rupture concludes with a quivering “It hurts to be something / It’s worse to be nothing / With you.”
There is something rather significant about what Laufey represents, both sonically and visually. “How many mainstream artists play the cello?” asks Derrick Gee, a Chinese-Australian radio host and music commentator who became aware of her when he ran 88Rising Radio, a platform for Asian artists on SiriusXM. “The fact that she can stand in front of a mic with a Gibson ES-335 guitar wearing a gown is baller,” he says. “Whether she’s plucking a cello or tinkling the ivories, she has a multidimensional and very visual appeal that extends beyond the tradition.”
Neither Gee nor Laufey were exposed to popular Asian musicians when they were coming up. “I didn t know I was allowed to do this or if people would accept me in this space,” says Gee. “I’ve become the artist I wanted to look up to,” Laufey says. With contributing cultural factors like the K-Pop boom and the rise of contemporaries such as breakout Filipino-British singer and friend Beabadobee, it appears the possibilities are broadening for future generations. “If you go to my shows, a large portion of the audience is Asian and I don t think that s by accident. Everyone wants to be represented.”
And represent they do. Fans have been showing up to concerts and secret sessions (like a recent London gig inside a boat’s floating bookstore) in “Laufey-core”—a preppy, retro look, complete with pleated miniskirts, penny loafers, and neat collars. This gamine persona belies a business savvy aided by her partnership with her creative director: twin sister (and accomplished violinist) Junia Lin Jónsdóttir. “I know Laufey so well and sometimes it’s like we don’t even have to discuss an idea — it just appears,” says the London-based Jónsdóttir. What began as polaroid photoshoots in their childhood bedroom for early releases and has morphed into a much bigger role. For her “From The Start,” music video, for example, she envisioned a Reykjavik riff on a midcentury wonderland inspired by their hometown’s most cinematic abodes. “These were the coolest houses to visit in Iceland, with their quirky shapes, bold angles, and colors,” she said. The resulting video is a return to Yé-Yé Girls style camp, complete with a Piet Mondrian palette and Laufey prancing around in Carel patent Mary-Janes.
Even though Jónsdóttir is often mistaken for her famous sibling, there is a yin and yang to their rapport. “Nobody has your back like your family,” Jónsdóttir says. “You’re able to get to solutions very fast when you can argue and reason like you did as kids when fighting over the remote control.” Laufey is looking forward to her twin’s eventual move to Los Angeles to join her team full time. “It feels wrong when we are apart. No matter what I do as this artist, I m only going to float as high up as my sister. I’m constantly tethered to her. It’s unbreakable.” And, there’s no denying that clips of them together (often dragging one another in jest) make for algorithmic TikTok gold.
Speaking of gold, Laufey’s evidently not-so-lofty list of future goals include a Grammy nomination, a film score credit (like her Oscar-winning Icelandic musical idol and fellow cellist, composer Hildur Guðnadóttir), and a James Bond theme song. “But these are all very faraway dreams,” she says. On the more immediate horizon, later this month she’ll perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, dressed by Chanel. It’s something of A Star is Born fashion moment for Laufey, who recently scooped up her first pair of Chanel flats, a t-strap ballerina. “I barely dare to wear them,” she says. “They are my idealized version of the perfect shoe.” She’s also on the hunt for a stylist who can help further her entree into fashion’s upper echelons. Currently, her eye is attuned to designs by Sandy Liang, Miu Miu, Simone Rocha, and Iceland’s Hildur Yeoman, who’s enchanting dresses she often wears on-stage. Clearly, staying true to where she came from is key to her image. “Being Icelandic is at the end of the day the best brand,” she says. “Everyone remembers you.”
