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Lykke Li

Lykke Li might look like she’s on the verge of tears — she often does — but her round face changes shape in amazement when told that the mighty Bryan Ferry was seen in the audience at her London ICA show. “Really?!”

You couldn’t blame the girl for not noticing at the time. On stage, she was possessed. As she whacked her tambourine and asked if everyone in the room was in love, girls in the audience danced like they had forgotten where they were. Boys were mesmerised and scared. She took everyone with her — even Ferry.

“Oh, I get no men at all. Nobody approaches me,” Li says. “The ones who do like me, who aren’t intimidated, are psychotic. No boundaries. They’re really out there.”

There are other things Li, 22, wishes for, beyond a boyfriend. A different voice is one. “I really wish I had a black man’s voice, but I don’t.” The legacy of that mistake of birth — her parents are a Swedish musician and a photographer — is her debut album, Youth Novels, released on her own record label, LL Recordings, under the mentorship of fellow Swedes Peter Bjorn and John. Put simply, her sound is a mixture of hip-hop, folk and pop, but you would need to hear it to understand how it all hangs together.

She is all about self-expression — her heroine is crazy Big Edie from the 1975 film Grey Gardens. “People say that when I dance, I’m trying to be sexy,” she says. “But I’m just dancing, being in the moment, close to earth, myself. Edie showed us that you can be who you want.

“I don’t have self-esteem, but I’ve got courage. Fake it till you make it. Just pretend.”

The single Breaking It Up is out on August 25

Camille

Camille Dalmais’s brain has already thought pop out of existence. “The notion of being a pop star is old. We’ve had David Bowie, we’ve had Spinal Tap. It’s a pastiche. We have to start again.”

Which isn’t to say — not for a minute — that the 30-year-old Parisian singer, who goes by the name of Camille, doesn’t admire her fellow artists. Madonna, in particular, for “fighting to be a sex icon at 50” — and Amy Winehouse. It’s just that, personally, she doesn’t do things that way. “Women use their power in different ways. Some agree to be men’s projections, some not. It can be artistic, like when Gainsbourg asked Jane Birkin to be on his album. But I choose to express my imagination.”

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