Icona Pop have offered a fresh taste of their new album with its second single Faster.
The duo – starring Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo – rose to global prominence in 2012 with their Charli XCX collaboration I Love It and released their first and to-date only LP, ‘This Is… Icona Pop’, the following year.
Now, 10 years later, they’re gearing up to unveil its long-awaited follow-up and having released lead track I Want You with Galantis earlier this year, they’re back with Faster.
Of the club-oriented track, they say: “Faster was so fun to make because it was probably the first time (but not last) in the process of making our new album where we felt completely free from the rules of how you are supposed to make a pop song.
“We just followed our instincts and played around with our amazing producer Yaro and wanted to make something that we could take straight from the studio to our DJ set.
“Faster is just how we like it in our DJ sets, hard, minimal, banging but still with hooks, playfulness and a POP sensibility.”
Check out Faster below.
Speaking to RETROPOP, Icona Pop opened up about their new material, which was born during their “super boring” lockdown in Sweden.
“We’ve been touring for so many years and we’ve been trying to write music, then when we left LA and went back to Sweden before the lockdown started we were super bored and we ended up in the same studio where we wrote our first songs,” revealed Aino.
“We were also scared,” added Caroline. “What was gonna happen with our career? Would we ever be able to stand on stage again? Or travel? It was such a weird time…”
With the future of their career in doubt, the pair set about working on new material while touching base with fans with virtual ‘Rave Spa’ sessions on social media.
“We’d be doing sheet masks and DJing in robes. Just really fun things so we were still connected with our fans, which influenced us when we started writing,” Caroline continued. “We said, ‘OK – let’s go in, have no rules, and see where we end up.’ And it’s pretty cool that during the most quiet times of our lives, we wrote our clubbiest songs ever!”
