AURORA

AURORA’s art pop swirls and throbs with all the mystical splendour of a C. S. Lewis novel. The singer’s gift for infusing her songwriting with metaphysics, feminism and deep ecology reaches back to her pastoral childhood. Born Aurora Aksnes in 1996, she spent a good deal of her youth exploring her imagination while roaming the mountain forests surrounding her family’s home in western Norway. The Enya-inspired vocal arrangements and ceremonial beats woven through early songs like 2015’s “Runaway” arrived at the perfect time—just as artists from across the global pop spectrum started turning toward the otherworldly charms of vintage new-age music for inspiration. At the same time, Aksnes enjoys subverting the music press’ frequently invoked characterisations of her as an ethereal entity from the wilds of Scandinavia. Sitting alongside collaborations with club veterans The Chemical Brothers and Kölsch, Aksnes’ third album, 2022’s The Gods We Can Touch, wraps dark philosophical, even religious ruminations in lavish compositions encrusted with electro-pop and folk textures.