With the release of her EP have you seen my mind ’cause I’ve lost it Swedish artist Hanna Ögonsten has officially introduced the world to her uniquely riveting style of dance-pop. Born in a suburb just outside of Stockholm she got her start by teaching herself how to play both guitar and piano, as well as how to produce music from within her bedroom. Apart from being an intensely fed passion creating music also helped a young Ögonsten cope with her parent’s divorce. Spurring her to not delve further into her artistic self to discover the sonically intimate worlds that lay therein.
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Over the course of four stellar tracks, Ögonsten travails a wide breadth of enigmatic and addictively melodic creations. There’s the EP’s opening track “stupidasscoolboys,” which blitzes forward on a lightning-quick trap beat, enthralling with its mesmeric rhythms and her own buoyant lyricism. But even on such an earnestly kinetic track, she finds space to bloom within this effervescent electronica. “Bouncing all the feelings in a head / I see that you left me a mess,” she coos lucidly between her rapid deliveries. “Used to think that I had no one else.”
Then there’s the rush that comes with “Lost It,” a veritable bop that takes inspiration from Ögonsten’s run-ins with indie-rock and punk but is dressed up as in frayed electro-pop. If there’s one track on the EP that gets your head bobbing uncontrollably and finds you hopelessly infected by dance mania it’s this one. “Big Teeth” finds her adrift on the song’s shimmering and warped melody, struggling to reign in the negative voices gnawing away inside her head.
The EP’s final track brings together all the most effective elements of Ögonsten’s music into one melodically swirling track about letting go titled “Kick Off My Shoes.” Over its driving beat and warmly effervescent tones, she draws a line in the sand by refusing to even run back to this person ever again. “I’d face all my fears,” she sings in her beaming voice, choosing to face a lot more adversity and pain instead. “I’d kick off my shoes and dive.”
“I write a diary on my cell phone. Or at least I write lots of notes,” Ögonsten said of the process of writing her EP. “They’re about a little bit of everything, mostly my feelings. I’ve been doing this since I was a young teenager, but this autumn I realised that the tone in my notes had changed. They weren’t happy and I almost sounded bitter. I was surprised, it didn’t really feel like me. But thinking about it, I realised it’s not that unexpected. Being a young woman in the music industry means to constantly be reminded that you are ‘a female producer’ and that you therefore should be questioned. It’s exhausting. I realised that it was time to get this out of my mind and the result became this EP…I’m so proud of how it turned out.”
Whether she’s voicing her intimacies over a lush soundscape or dishing out biting retrospections atop a vivid dance beat, Ögonsten continues to remain a fixating new voice amongst alt-pop creators. Be sure to check out her debut EP BBy Boo, Ögonsten & You which leans even further into her ability to craft compellingly openhearted anthems: like the indie-pop inflected “Bang My Head” and buzzingly electronic “Rockstar.”
Visit Hanna Ögonsten on Twitter and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.
Words: Steven Ward
Listen to have you seen my mind ’cause I’ve lost it the new EP from Hanna Ögonsten below!
