SÓLEY STEFÁNSDÓTTIR – ABOUT

Early Life and Education

Few artists balance fragility and fearlessness quite like Sóley Stefánsdóttir. The Icelandic songwriter, composer, and producer has spent more than a decade and a half crafting music that slips between dark pop, contemporary classical, and cinematic sound design. Her songs, built on hushed vocals and stark piano, seem to glow from within – tender one moment, quietly unsettling the next.

Raised in Hafnarfjörður, a harbour town just outside Reykjavík, Sóley was drawn to the piano from an early age. She studied classical music before moving into composition at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, where her imagination began to stretch beyond the traditional. While still a student, she joined the indie collective Seabear, whose quirky, melodic songs gained a loyal following across Europe and North America. Within that creative community, Sóley found the confidence to step forward on her own.

Debut and Early Records

Her first solo release, the 2010 EP Theater Island, introduced a world of delicate melodies and dreamlike imagery. The following year, her debut album We Sink arrived – an arresting collection of eerie lullabies that announced a singular new voice from Iceland’s ever-fertile scene. Critics were quick to take note, and touring soon carried her across Europe, the US, and Asia.

With 2015’s Ask the Deep, Sóley ventured into darker territory. The record pulsed with heavier rhythms and existential unease, revealing a more urgent edge to her songwriting. Two years later, Endless Summer offered its mirror image – a radiant, orchestral album full of warmth and light. Between the two lay a striking artistic range: proof that she could inhabit shadow and sunlight with equal grace.

Mother Melancholia

Then came Mother Melancholia (2021), a record that shifted everything. Built around prepared piano, voice, and electronics, it abandoned familiar song forms in favour of something more abstract and cinematic. The result was an apocalyptic meditation on ecological collapse and human fragility – bold, beautiful, and deeply moving. Critics called it her most fearless work to date, and it pushed her further into the world of composition and film scoring.

Film, Scoring, and Collaboration

Since then, Sóley has continued to expand her creative reach. She has written scores for film and theatre, blending piano, electronics, and voice into immersive sound worlds that mirror her visual storytelling instincts. Collaboration has become central to her process, linking her music to art, stage, and screen.

Live Performance and Today

Live, she remains a mesmerising performer – whether alone at the piano or surrounded by an ensemble, her concerts feel like shared dreams. Now based in Reykjavík, Sóley continues to move between songwriting and composition, between intimacy and imagination. Over the years, she has built a body of work that is unmistakably her own: poetic, unsettling, and quietly transformative.