Show Preview: MusicfestNW Presents: Icona Pop, K. Flay, Sirah

[POP TRIUMPHALISM] Banging into the global consciousness in 2012 with summer jam nonpareil "I Love It," 20-something Swedes Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo have finally released a debut album proper, This Is…Icona Pop, a collection of balls-to-the-wall club hits alongside rather more mature (and skippable) power balladry—think t.A.T.u You. If the similarly styled empowerment anthems never quite reach the bonkers heights of that first single-cum-mission statement, they're still leaping madly all the while. The music snaps and crackles with anime ebullience, casual hauteur and clubland sweat cinched together for a madcap frolic through darkened boulevards. It is the stuff of youth: adrenalized, commodified and, blessedly, digitized for our amusement and, in its way, our edification. Don't diminish Icona Pop as just another bubble rising upward from a Diet Pepsi generation that believes caffeinated effervescence and manufactured disposability are birthrights. The end product's less than reflective, perhaps, but the same hyper-attuned connectivity that sees no emotion wasted breeds an all-inclusive muse seething with precision and awareness. In the bleakest view, they've inherited a world of fun-sized spectacle—an ecosystem drenched in artificial sweetener—and we're a species famously keen to adapt. Set adrift on an ocean of pop, we should neither be surprised to discover they've a mighty thirst nor disappointed to learn it is loved.

WWeek 2015