Oh Land

Before an injury put an end to her dancing career, Nanna Øland Fabricius studied with the Royal Swedish Ballet as a teenager. Permanently sidelined by a fractured disk in her spine, she turned her focus to music instead. Fabricius had been raised in the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, by a particularly musical set of parents -- her mother sang opera, while her father composed classical music -- but she took a different approach to her own songwriting, which drew heavily from dance-pop, R&B, and a year’s worth of tutelage at the University of Electronic Composition. Now operating under the stage name Oh Land, she began creating a sound that evoked a unique mix of Robyn, Feist, and Lily Allen. Her dance training came into play, too, allowing Oh Land to fill her early performances with choreography and theatrical flourishes. By 2008, she’d signed to a Danish label and released her debut EP, Fauna. One year later, she inked an international deal with Epic. Working with Dan Carey, Dave McCracken, and Pharrell Williams, Oh Land spent much of 2010 working on her full-length debut. Her first single, “Sun of a Gun,” was released late that year, with a self-titled album following in March 2011. ~ Andrew Leahey, Rovi