Roia

Originating from Salzburg, Austria, the electronic pop ensemble Roia—whose name means “dream” in Persian—took shape in 2000. That year the sixteen-year-old vocalist Nina Hochrainer began shaping several tracks on an aging four-track recorder alongside her cousin Dorian Wimmer. Before long her father, the Salzburg-based producer Paul Hochrainer, whose career in the city dates back to the 1980s, entered the project with synthesizer player Sam Vahdat; together they laid down numerous demos inside their private studio. Airplay arrived for the track “Suicide Butterfly” on the Austrian station FM4 in 2004, prompting the group to ink a deal with the Viennese imprint Monkeymusic. Their first full-length effort, Cute Little Fear, appeared in 2006—an intricate, experimental pop album that fuses Portishead-esque electronics with dreamy melodies and melancholy songs, its English lyrics delivered by both Hochrainer and Wimmer.