Country Music from Iceland? "Lay Low" singing "By and By" at Frikirkjan in Reykjavik

I heard this young lady interviewed on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition. She has quite a voice and this song is one of the best I've heard in a while. Her music is getting more popular on iTunes and Amazon so it's likely more people will hear of her soon, although few of us are likely to be able to pronounce her real name.

(from her MySpace site biography) "LAY LOW is the alter ego of singer-songwriter Lovísa Elísabet Sigrúnardóttir, who was born in London in 1982 to an Icelandic mother and Sri Lankan father, with the family relocating to Reykjavík when she was a small child. She took piano lessons at a young age and started playing bass and guitar in her teens, performing with several local acts before joining the experimental rock band Benny Crespo's Gang adding keyboards, synthesizers….and her voice….to her musical armory.

"LAY LOW evolved in early 2006, after Lovísa was contacted by a local label showing an interest in a raw demo she had placed on MySpace that combined elements of blues, folk and country and twisted them into a fascinating new shape. Just a few short months after being discovered she had recorded and released her debut album, ‘Please Don't Hate Me’, which topped the Icelandic chart and became the bestselling original album in the country that year, getting nominated for four Icelandic Music Awards (winning three) in the process.

"Demonstrating a musical maturity beyond her years, ‘Please Don't Hate Me’ was an impressive debut, with Lovísa’s intoxicating new take on classic Americana sounds attracting much praise and her authentic and compelling live performances standing up well to the recorded versions of her songs."




“What does LAY LOW sound like to us? Like Nashville and Reykjavík aren’t 3.260 miles apart. Sigrúnardóttir strums and croons lovely, twangy tales of heartbreak and lonely nights like an Icelandic Patsy Cline in a hoodie and skinny jeans.”
– Paste Magazine