With wind-blown locks of blond hair, captivating eyes, a ballerina’s body, and a head full of fairy tales, Nanna Øland Fabricius seduces listeners into her musical world of dreamy lyrics over cosmic melodies. She could easily be a muse the gods are missing from the heavens with her lithe dancing, starry tunic, and honey-combed voice. She is a siren from the distant land of Denmark.
The place of whimsy Nanna creates with her music is called Oh Land, a hybrid of her middle name Øland. This playful terrain she composes is filled with balloons and starry skies; its secrets are fast becoming discovered as her music is becoming infectious with early praise coming from the New York Times and Billboard.
This past March, she exploded across the musical stratosphere at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas with 10 unforgettable concerts appearances that made her the hardest working artist there. However, she never flinched at the exhaustive schedule. Her mantra is to live in the moment and the best moment is now.
With her self-titled album from Epic Records having been released the same week of SXSW she has had a lot of attention thrust upon her in the last few weeks. One of the album’s first singles, “White Nights” is at the same time a technological symphony of beats and rhythm and a sing-song rock lullaby. Referring to the noise and pulse of the city she sings, “There’s a restlessness in me/Keeps me up ’till the dawn/There is no silence/I will keep following the sirens,” referring to the mythological seducers that call to lonely sailors. The result is a futuristic melody that could also be a classical piece as well.
Subsequently, many musicians that have experienced the same sudden celebrity might not have managed the spotlight as well as Nanna. On the contrary, her outlook remains curious and inviting to the experience of rising stardom. Never pretentious, her personality is graceful and groovy; her appearance is free and flowing. Her hair hangs freely past her shoulders and her favorite stage outfits are ponchos or butterfly winged sleeves that she uses to accentuate her music as she dances, almost like a child twirling in the sunlight.
While driving from Texas to Los Angeles, she spoke to me about how her star landed in the place where dreams come true. To her America is enormous and never-ending. It would take only a few hours to drive across her country, in the same amount of time she doesn’t even leave Texas.
“It’s so big and so different from where I come from,” she says gazing out the window. “America truly feels like you can do anything here. This is the place dreams come true.” Her stunning features and natural talent has made her easy to fall in love with. It is evident that she is on the verge of something huge and prolific.
“I just want it!” she says of her back-to-back onstage performances. “I am just going where the music takes me; I am living in it.” As we speak she is on the way to LA to make her appearances on a Jimmy Kimmel Live that will also air on the Late Show with David Letterman.
However, her story begins far, far away in Scandinavia where she grew up with a mother who was an opera singer and a father who was a church organist. Therefore, it was typical for her to be around men that wore make-up and women dressed in creative costumes. She did not have an abundance of toys and distractions on television; rather she was compelled to create her own stories and props. 
For her classical training began early. At age 9 she began training at the Royal Danish Ballet. By age 16 she had moved to Stockholm to attend the Royal Swedish Ballet.
“I always live in my head, I have always been a dreamer,” she admits. Her favorite characters were a rooster and a stork-like character that would gallivant on adventures in a city she would map out and even create their own language. These were typical make-believe games she would play while attending ballet school, however, it would nurture her multi-sensory talents. “That focus as a child I bring to what I am doing today.”
Sadly, by the time she was 18 her dancing career was already over after fracturing her spine. So painful was her injury that she had to undergo physical therapy to regain the ability to walk. Although she succumbed to her limitations she soon discovered that a new art form was beckoning her while she lay in bed listening to music.
“I had to give up a dream that I had for so long. I couldn’t dance my way out.” she says of this transition period. What she discovered was that it was always the music that inspired her to dance and the music hadn’t left her. Instead of letting her injury break her spirit she began to choreograph the music into a luscious terrain of beats and lilting lyrics. “You can let it break you or find another way to dance. Music was the most natural way to say the things I wanted to say.”
In 2008, she released her first album Fauna under the influences of Scandinavian producer Kasper Bjorke. The result was lullaby soundscapes that were playful and surreal. But her dreams were bigger than her beginnings so she came to America to seek her fate.
Without the help of a publicist or manager, Nanna took her music to SXSW in 2009. She immediately caught the eyes of Sony reps that encouraged her to move more permanently to Brooklyn so she could produce her second album with Dan Carey (Hot Chip, The Kills, Franz Ferdinand) and Dave McCracken (Depeche Mode, Beyoncé, AFI). Epic Records was giving her the chance to reach even further into the sky with her vision and bring her electronic symphony of beats and sound effects to a bigger audience.
“I was living in Copenhagen but it was so far away. I had to come back here and face it,” she says of her decision to come back. “I always had dream of coming to U.S.”
The label asked her to make a list of people she wanted to work with on her album. “I was like a kid in a candy store. The first people I met were Dan Carey and Dave McCracken, they are my idols,” she says. “They push me in a loving way. They were a wall to push against and also to lean on. They quickly understood my world. When we create music, we lock all the doors and go crazy with instruments and boil it down until it’s simple.”
This process has given Oh Land its multi-layered, zigzagging melody. On stage she uses electronic percussion instruments, an omnichord, and drum pads that look like they came from another world. She has two band mates that perform with her tinkering with electronic gizmos, keyboards, or a drum set. She sets the stage with balloons which she projects images onto like wolves, moons, or a chorus of singing heads. “I wanted to project onto the balloons because visuals are really important to me. I didn’t want it to be detached like on a screen.”
For her “Wolf and I” track she took the inspiration from the first albums she collected when she was 10-years-old, which were Native American hymns and songs. As she would listen to them she would close her eyes and imagine mountains; a drastic comparison to the flat landscape of Denmark.
“Something made me dream of mountains,” she says of her vision. “I was standing on a mountain singing.” One of the stories past on through these songs was of a wolf in love with the moon who couldn’t be together because the sun was jealous.
Her fearlessness and youthful creativity is refreshing and follows suit with her predecessors like Swedish musician Lykke Li, British singer Goldfrapp, and French sister duo CocoRosie. The breed of music evokes mischief and often incorporates sounds that might have been a forgotten vintage to. She has taken these theatrical influences that began with her love of Russian composers and the contemporary musical drama of Icelandic singer Bjork and has arrived at her own sound.
Bizarre and fantastical art has developed organically through many Scandinavian artists like Nanna. She explains that in her area of the world there are many theatrical enterprises big and small.
“Definitely, we are a country of story-telling,” she says noting that some of the world’s most famous fairy tales are from Danish author Hans Christen Anderson. In music, many artists follow the same whimsical path. “We don’t have big commercial success in music so we do what we want to do,” she says with a laugh.
The choice to write her albums in English was another part of her adventure. Languages intrigue her and she admits often affects the emotion or story being told. “It’s fun to find new meaning in words. If I wrote in Danish the meaning would be different.”
Little nuances excite her about traveling through our big country. Meeting local residents is way more exciting to her than tourist attractions. Trying our food is sometimes exciting and other times not so fulfilling. While she admits to loving In-N-Out Burgers on the West Coast, the vast majority of road side eateries make it hard to eat healthy. “It’s a challenge touring in the U.S. It’s hard to eat healthy. I end up eating a lot of crap.” However, she did enjoy crab legs when she was in Dallas.
Costumes were a big part of growing up in the theatre for Nanna and her sister, who later became a fashion designer. Their mom would bring back magazines from England and they would try to recreate their favorite looks. Now her tastes are still whimsical.
“I love single pieces more than collections. If I had to name a designer it would be Missoni, for their colorful designs and Miu Miu, for all their fantastic creations.”
Nanna’s career was born from her captivating creative upbringing and nurtured through her own inner ambitions. The result is almost spiritual with its uplifting harmonies yet allegorical stories. She has made it very easy to love her and her music.
For right now her future plans are to keep living in the moment and riding the comets of stardom that are starting to burst in her skies. You can almost imagine her waving as she whizzes by your watchful planet.