"Have you got room for me?"

Sometimes you come across a band or artist and you wonder why the hell they aren't signed to a label. At this point it's easy to become depressed at the lack of music taste in the world, but if you are me, you blog about it and hope that more people will take an interest and like them too.

This brings me to Ida Maria. She's a 23 year old Norwegian (from a tiny place called Nesna) who is now living in Sweden - ah, those Scandinavians again! Ida Maria and her band, Johannes Lindberg, Olle Lundin and Stefan Törnby, make (mainly) punky pop music. Excellent punky pop music. There's something about her vocal style that sounds really familiar, but I wouldn't compare her directly to anyone due to the variety of her style, although there's more than a hint of Björk in there.

If you decide you like her style (and why wouldn't you?!), the good news is that she's coming to the UK next month and has gigs scheduled at The Roadhouse in Manchester on 12th September and Old Blue Last in London (Shoreditch) on 20th September.

Ida Maria duetted with Pelle Carlberg on the brilliantly titled 'I Love You, You Imbecile', as mentioned in passing by John in this blog. The video is below.


Here are two Ida Maria mp3s for you to download. The first, Louie, is a melodious track that moves along apace and almost cries out for handclaps! Oh My God features Timo Räisänen and is a much more raucous affair - ace! Both are right click and 'save as' jobbies.

Ida Maria - Louie mp3

Ida Maria - Oh My God mp3

These are great songs but I would strongly recommend that you go to Ida Maria's myspace page and listen to the songs there. They are possibly even better. My favourite is 'Better When You're Naked'.
Also head over to the NRK Urørt site where there are more songs to download. I have nowhere to send you to buy her music as of yet but you will know the moment that I do. (Come on, Ida Maria, hurry up and sell us stuff!)

Below you can watch her doing a jazzy song, Pleasure, and looking incredibly cool with a bass guitar.