“I've always written my own songs but mostly for myself. If anyone would have said to me about a year ago, that in spring 2018 you will release your debut EP and collaborate with some of Sweden's best musicians, mixers, photographers and film directors, I wouldn't have thought it was true!”

Anna & the Sea is the solo project of Anna Lindstrom, that was a wild fancy less than a year ago and has now materialized in her debut EP Söräng.

The songs are written and produced entirely by herself, recorded together with a number of friends and familiar faces from the Swedish music scene.

The result is indie pop - rhythmic, complex and dreamlike all at the same time, with a stripped-down but sublime production that gives room to Anna’s unmistakable vocals.

Her debut single “Lake Como” and the sequel “The Sun Is Shining For You” was released earlier this year and got picked up by Swedish national radio and found fans amongst music blogs and magazines such as HYMN, Mystic Sons, Medium, Popmuzik, Popmani, and Indietronica.

Originally from a small town in Sweden, Anna moved to Stockholm, getting involved early in the music scene as a singer and background singer in different bands, as a sound engineer, radio show host, music journalist, and DJ.

Secretly, she has been working on her own material for what feels like since high school, but it never felt like the right place or time to put everything together, until now.

After playing around in a friend’s studio last year, things started to fall into place. Anna returned to the studio with her songs, written on her tired computer, and recorded them again, but now together with a number of musicians, amongst them Peter Morén of Peter Bjorn and John, drummer Ola Winkler (Ane Brun, Veronica Maggio), Nils Berg (Håkan Hellström) and Fredrik Hermansson (Ane Brun) playing organ and piano.

"As I entered the studio, I had a very clear vision of what I wanted and how it would sound. Having the luxury to work with such amazing musicians and seeing that my ideas held, gave me the confidence to continue."

The choice of the name Anna & the Sea fell naturally and reflects both the private and universal in her music:

"Afterwards, I realized that writing has been a way for me to understand. To understand the relationships with the people I love. It's partly very personal but also somehow universal because there are feelings and questions that many can recognize."

The title of the EP, Söräng, is a reference to the Swedish countryside at the place where Anna grew up and that was once called Söräng. The video to “Lake Como” was shot in Söräng and editor is Johan Söderberg (Madonna, David Bowie, Lykke Li, First Aid Kit, and others), director and camera José Figueroa.


Anna tells about some of the tracks on Söräng:

"Lake Como describes a utopia, a place of getaway that you wish existed. It's about getting through difficult times in your life and the wish that things would be different. But at the same time, you never know how it might have been if you had chosen another direction."

“Many of my song ideas come to me in my dreams, which Picking Up A Dream is about. When I wake up, I have to be quick to record it on my voice memo. Cause if I wait too long, the idea is lost. Picking Up A Dream is about taking the initiative and acting quickly in life because if you don’t, it might be too late."

"The Sun Is Shining For You is about to be silenced and to not be in the center of your life and to unfairly end up in the shadow of others who take more space. It's about feeling lost and to kill the anxiety with escapism like partying hard and driving around without goals.”