Ana Laan

With a multicultural embrace of global pop that has her delivering vocals across English, Spanish, French, and Swedish while layering her own electronically processed voice, Ana Laan draws comparisons to an eclectic range of artists that includes Björk, Bebel Gilberto, Juana Molina, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. She entered the world in Madrid as the child of a Spanish literature professor and an American mother, yet passed the greater part of her early years in Stockholm before heading back to Spain for the remainder of her secondary schooling and subsequent enrollment at the University of Madrid, where English literature became her focus. Once she earned her degree, Laan launched a professional singing career that found her collaborating with David Broza, Javier Alvarez, Christina Rosenvinge, Sergio Dalma, Diego Vaallo, and Jorge Drexler. At the same time she maintained a steady association with the Spanish indie lounge imprint Siesta, issuing the 2002 album Apocalypso under the alias Rita Calypso. A more introspective turn followed with her first release under her own name, the Leo Sidran co-produced Oregano of 2004. Describing her sound as “Latin-Baltic divorce pop,” Laan next tracked the follow-up Chocolate & Roses in New York—again with Sidran at the helm—before its 2008 appearance.