Happy go Lykke

BRIMMING WITH CONFIDENCE Li spent summers of her youth in Nepal and India, back when she went by her full name, Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson.

Photo: Marcus Palmqvist

Born with musician’s DNA, Swedish indie-pop songstress Lykke Li (pronounced “licky lee”) contends that it wasn’t her folks but a one-gloved superstar who inspired her. “It was mainly Michael Jackson’s fault, not my parents,” she admits. Dad Johan Zachrisson played in the popular Swedish proggy-reggae-rock band Dag Vag (which sounded a bit like the Scandinavian Police), and mom Karsti Stiege dabbled in punk before finding her calling as a photographer. But though her commercial-pop ambitions were formed early, Li spent idyllic years of her childhood in the mountains of Portugal: “I was one with nature,” she says. “There was a lot of running around naked with animals and friends.” Even today, on her debut album, Youth Novels, one can hear the fascinating tension between Li’s desire to entertain and a recluse’s fondness for arty opacity.

Li is more playfully than painfully introverted. She might sing that she is “shy, shy, shy,” but she moves with a dreamy confidence on stage. Perhaps weary of press after a year of promotion, she returned our e-mailed questions with brief, enigmatic answers. Which is appropriate, since the hiding-in-the-spotlight trick she manages on her debut is a masterful performance. It’s as difficult to pin down Li’s emotional state on the album—more thoughtful than melancholy—as it is to associate it with a genre—too wound-up to be folk, too withdrawn to be pure pop. Likewise, her restrained band discovers a unique middle ground, avoiding trendy extremes of both gloss and garage. Live, the group can make magic with not much more than a tambourine and a handheld toy piano. Of course, Li’s swaying starlet moves—as she points and swoons—and her crushworthy bohemian look haven’t hurt.

After an aborted attempt at making it in trendy Brooklyn earlier this decade, Li settled back in Stockholm, where her hip dad introduced her to Björn Yttling of jangly pop act Peter Bjorn and John. Though Li wasn’t much of an indie type, she clicked with Yttling, who in turn produced the stunning Youth Novels, finally released stateside in August.

Youth Novels is a beguiling piece of deconstructed pop music that’s just a step ahead of the times. The record is a showcase for Yttling’s pared-down yet warm sound. With its bare, just-enough-to-get-the-job-done production, Youth Novels owes a trick or two to Feist’s The Reminder, minus the coffeehouse guitar strum, plus clinky percussion grounded in Velvet Underground–style basslines. Yttling’s compatibly organic sonics enhance Li’s rainy-day songs.

Her insouciant but soulful numbers like “I’m Good, I’m Gone” are elementary—easy to hum along with. “Why make it hard?” she asks us, pinpointing her guiding songwriting philosophy. She tends to place her fragile but metered voice smack-dab on the beat. But as simple as her delivery might be, Li can take the forms of folkie chanteuse, pop upstart and indie heroine at once on the pastoral love tune “My Love” or the hippy groove “Let It Fall.” All the while, the songs resemble ’80s new-wave gems fed through the kooky studio of ’60s girl-group eccentric Joe Meek.

The stripped tunes from Youth Novels are naturals for a remix—DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy, U.K. group Metronomy and French housie Fred Falke have all knocked out worthwhile ones. Despite those and collabs on club-pop tracks by Stockholm producer Kleerup, Li says, “I don’t like dance music that much.” Prediction? Li’s next career move is unlikely to involve the disco-dance floor.

But these days, pop pragmatism trumps all—Li’s even licensed a tune for a Victoria’s Secret ad. “I need to eat,” she states. Yet she hasn’t completely left the hippy mountain ideals behind: “Money comes, money goes. What matters is how much you enjoy it. Music is the healing force.”

Lykke Li plays the Empty Bottle Saturday 25.