Soley

Sóley Stefánsdóttir, performing simply as Sóley, crafts delicate electronic pop while maintaining ties to the Icelandic indie groups Seabear and Sin Fang. Scandinavian acts including Sigur Rós and Múm shaped her approach, prompting her to start creating music during her teenage years before she enrolled to study piano and composition at the Icelandic Art Academy in 2007. Around the same period she joined Seabear and Sin Fang—both projects involving Sindri Már Sigfússon—initially hesitating to sing directly into the microphone; repeated performances gradually dispelled that reluctance and led her toward a solo path. Her first release under her own name, the EP Theater Island, appeared on Morr Music in 2010, followed the next year by the fuller-sounding debut album We Sink. After several seasons spent writing and touring, she issued the eight-song solo-piano EP Krómantík in 2014 and, twelve months later, her second album Ask the Deep. A note she jotted to herself after waking one night—“Write about hope and spring”—guided the lighter, piano-focused tone of 2017’s Endless Summer. The subsequent year brought the more expansive Team Dreams, a joint effort with Sin Fang and Múm’s Örvar Smárason.