March 29th, marked the release of Swedish artist on the rise AMWINs highly-anticipated debut EP, 'AMWIN in Wonderland'. A collision of pop, hip-hop, and electronic soundscapes, AMWIN collaborated with songwriters/producers like Carli Löf (Robyn, Galantis), Jay Weathers (Not3s, Jacob Banks), and Carl Lehman (Liam Payne, Panic At The Disco!), adorning each track with otherworldly beats and luminous textures and her own madcap vocal twists.
While much of AMWIN's material embodies a certain restless attitude, lead single "Dua Lipa" unfolds as a full-tilt love song, a magnificent bop built on her heart-on-sleeve lyrics. The EP then drifts into an edgier mood on her first three singles "DeLorean", "Living Mistake", and "Uber" - which caught support from Hypebae, Highsnobiety, Clash Magazine, MILK, and more. When asked about the inspiration behind the project, AMWIN shared, "This EP lets you in to the ambivalent mind of a young women. A world that's often upside down. On one side super fucking happy and amazing, on the other side super fucking sad and pissed off. Too many emotions to count. Finally, after hours of blood, sweat and tears, they turned in to my debut EP. I'm so stoked to finally share it with you".
Every AMWIN song is an escape into the world inside her head, a beautifully strange fantasia populated by glamorous misfits and glorious monsters, libertines and Bright Young Things, '80s movie idols and '90s rock-and-roll stars. On her EP
AMWIN in Wonderland, the Stockholm-based artist brings that world
to life with her hypnotically glossy yet minimalist pop, delivering a
debut that's equal parts elegant fever dream and sharply detailed
confession of her deepest desires.
Growing up in
Gothenburg, AMWIN first discovered her artistic streak and love of music
as a little girl, when she obsessed over hyper-creative and
idiosyncratic stars like Missy Elliott and Sinead O'Connor.
"I always dreamed of making music, but I was living out in the countryside and it just seemed impossible," says AMWIN. "At some point I realized, 'I don't want to die depressed because I didn't even try.'"
At age 18 she landed a spot on Swedish
Idol, which soon led to her signing to Universal Music Sweden. Since
kickstarting her music career she's taken a decidedly self-possessed
approach to every aspect of her output, including conceptualizing her
videos: an element that further blurs the boundaries
between fantasy and reality, with each visual revealing AMWIN's refined
cinematic sensibilities along with her fantastically goofball humor.
With the release of her
debut EP, AMWIN hopes that her own creative journey might spark a new
sense of freedom in others: the freedom to feel too much, to make an
extraordinary mess of your heart, and—maybe most
of all—to wildly contradict yourself whenever it feels right. "I
really just wanted to allow myself to not make sense, because I think
that's so true to life: we often don't make much sense in the way we act
or the way we feel," she says of AMWIN in
Wonderland. "I want everyone to know that every emotion or thought
is okay, because when you accept yourself instead of judging yourself,
it's so much easier to feel good. I guess that's my purpose with all of
this: to just let everything out, so we can
all feel good about who we really are."
