Sigrid

Cast your minds back to January 2020... Feels weird right? Like a daydream of a life before the so-called new normal hit. For 24-year-old Sigrid it meant being in LA working on the embryonic songs that would make up the hugely-anticipated follow-up to 2019's Sucker Punch, a firecracker of a debut that built on her BBC Sound of 2018 win and the top 10 success of the pulsating festival anthem Strangers. After returning to Norway, and then back to LA for more experiments in pop alchemy in March 2020, the pandemic hit and suddenly America was a day away from closing its borders.

Sigrid escaped back to Norway with the genesis of one very special song under her belt, the disco-ball-shaped Mirror, her glorious, stadium-sized comeback single. “It's definitely inspired by disco but also I grew up with bands like Muse and that really hard bass reminds me of them,”

A sense of taking control permeates much of Sigrid's second album How To Let Go. It's a record that deals with both the end of relationships and the start of new ones. So the galloping, future live favourite Burning Bridges confronts an ex with candour: “tried to wave a white flag but you set it on fire”, she sings at one point, that delicious rasp ever prominent. “It's definitely open for interpretation in terms of what kind of break-up I'm talking about, but it's inspired by one of the toughest things I've been through,”