MØ - Waste of Time

Danish alternative pop singer MØ, real name Karen Marie Ørsted, showcases a defiant anti-glamourous image in her videos, and an assured emotional rawness in her music. This endearing lack of pretense makes it much easier to see past the 'front' other artists might put up, and see the distinct personality from MØ herself. 

MØ's lyrics and voice are gritty and turbulent, much like her music, which is a crisp yet organic sounding mesh of alternative R&B and electropop favoured by her peers MS MR, the most obvious initial comparison. Arresting vocal stabs punctuate the industrial-flecked verse, and an unusual chorus melody is made memorable by MØ's delirious vocal. In a European alt-pop scene fairly saturated with indie female singers in this field, MØ looks like a keeper.

FOR FANS OF: MS MR, Charli XCX, Purity Ring

MØ - Pilgrim & Maiden

In the sea of wannabe cult-indiepop female singers in 2012, it's rare you find a quality song in the mire of fashionably vague videos and slicks electro-R&B beats. But Danish singer MØ's "Pilgrim" combines jaunty brass hooks with a powerhouse of a chorus and a Purity Ring-esque thud and clatter beat. There's a hint of personality and energy in her vocal when she singer "all the time I just want to fuck it up", and it's refreshing to hear a female indiepop singer do something other than deadpan in 2012. Not that the track will displease any fans of deadpan.

Check out her first single "Maiden" too,  a slightly eerier number that has european singer/songwriter written all over it, and features a gorgeous post-chorus guitar hook and the seductive lyric "my desire is ravaging me..."

FOR FANS OF: Purity Ring, Wild Belle, Charli XCX