Icelandic/Chinese singer Laufey — photo: @laufey

Laufey’s voice transcends you to a past time when men wore suits to dinner and women carried pocket books and wore lots of perfume. It’s a nice surprise to find out that this “old soul” of a songstress was in fact born in 1999.

Laufey Lín Jónsdottír goes by the mononym Laufey, is half-Icelandic and half-Chinese and spent most of her childhood in Washington D.C. and Reykjavik. Coming from a musical family, her mother a classical violinist and her grandfather was a professor of violin, Laufey herself became a cellist in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Soon after she found herself on a primetime stage as a finalist in competition shows, Island Got Talent and The Voice Island as a semi-finalist.

After graduating from the Berklee School of Music in 2021, she now resides in Los Angeles giving birth to her very up-and-coming music career. Her musical style is referred to as bedroom pop, but I prefer it more as modern jazz. She sings melodic, her voice charms with an ultra smooth jazz styling in “Best Friend”. Then there is a true romance, the sweet kind that our grandparents had when she sings “Valentine”.

We haven’t had someone like Laufey, at least not from her generation. It’s exciting to know that someone as young as twenty-two is making beautiful, classic jazz, but with modern, relatable lyrics.