In 2014, when Laufey Lín Jónsdottír was a teenager in Reykjavík, she told her mother "'I want to do with jazz what Taylor Swift has done with country.'"

Having grown up on classic musical —her mother is a Chinese classical musician, and Laufey played piano and cello from when she was four years old— she had turned to "singing jazz music as a 13-year-old." Which, she admits, "was really weird, nobody [else] was doing it."

Nearly a decade on, Laufey is "starting to slowly" live up to her goal. Based, these days, in Los Angeles, she has cultivated a huge crossover audience via a rising cult of TikTok fandom.

In conversation with Anthony Carew on The International Pop Underground, on the eve of her debut tour of Australia, Laufey talks about her music.

On her debut album Everything I Know About Love, she draws from romantic, mid-century styles: sad jazz crooners, Golden Age of Hollywood musicals, Brazilian bossa nova.

For her imminent second LP, she's thrown herself wholly into this sound. "What my fans like the most, to my relief, is what I enjoy making the most: the jazziest songs and the songs that are literally with an orchestra," Laufey says. "I'm getting comfortable leaning into my roots. There's no MIDI, no synth, it's all live instruments."

Photo © Gemma Warren