We catch up with Sunna Margrét ahead of her Rough Trade show

Hi! I’m happy, preparing for my UK concerts next month. How are you?

I usually go with experimental art-pop, but in three sentences… I guess I’d say I’m chasing some kind of feeling, although not always the same feeling. I often write from a perspective of loneliness, so it might be a plea for connection, to find my place of belonging in a complicated human experience. Then, my studio recordings and live performances rarely sound the same.

Probably playing the piano, or seeing my older sister play the piano. She was really good! She’s eight years older than me, so I wanted to do everything she was doing and from my point of view she was best at everything. My mother also sung to me lullabies and I remember those. That must be the first memory.

Now that I’ve lived in Switzerland for almost 10 years, I can see and appreciate better how much music is integrated in everyday life and deeply rooted in the culture in Iceland. Sometimes you need distance to understand your surroundings. I’d say being carefree in my music probably is influenced from growing up in Reykjavík. Daring to try things without being afraid of failure. Although I don’t know how it is growing up elsewhere in the world - maybe this is more common than I realise.

Definitely trying to have this carefree attitude, not to overthink it. Trust the music to do its job. I’m also often full of self doubt, but then finding this nonchalant persona really helps. Maybe there is a sense of not giving up easily, that is part of the culture I was raised in. That failure doesn’t exist, only lessons to move forward. You can’t predict the nature in Iceland, it changes rapidly, your house could be swallowed by lava tomorrow, so why over-calculate an outcome? The rain is horizontal most of the time, umbrellas are useless, so why not just get wet?

We’ve known each other for ages… They’ve been coming to Iceland for many years, with bands like Yunioshi and Spaceships are Cool also. When I joined Bloodgroup in 2010, they all already knew each other, so that’s how I met them. Then Bloodgroup and Yunioshi actually had a show in Nottingham at The Contemporary in 2012. I don’t remember much of it except a dancing zebra (Nathan?).

I’m bringing two amazing people with me. Sólrún on drums and Silla on guitar and vocals - she also takes the bass sometimes. We’ve been playing together for a while now and it just brings so much good energy to the stage. First when I started this solo project I was always alone, sometimes with visuals. Then I got invited to open for Dream Wife in Lausanne, and I called two of my friends and asked them to join me on stage - we never had a rehearsal or anything. After that gig we slowly worked towards eliminating the computer entirely and play everything live. Fast forward to last year when me, Silla and Sólrún did our first concert only the three of us, we brought back some backing track. We’ve also been integrating a few unreleased songs into the set lately and so I’m quite excited about this!