Music Being Played At The Grapevine Office This Week

You might imagine our office as a European wonderland, with espresso machines and turtlenecks and sophisticated furniture. As a street paper, we keep our overhead low. So during the week, many of us have massive headphones on, blaring our music of choice.

As a service to us and to our readers, then, we are sharing what Icelandic music is being played in the office this week. (Mostly through headphones.)

If you haven’t heard of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show this week, chances are you live in cave. Anything he does is very far from the music I like or tend to listen to, but his monumental show didn’t leave me indifferent. A masterclass in storytelling, what Bad Bunny did in these 13 minutes will certainly be remembered. For days afterwards, clips of the show occupied all of my social media feeds. I, myself, gave in to the collective frenzy and can now confirm I’ve just completed a four-day streak of Spanish on Duolingo! One thing that kept coming up during my (admittedly quite research-driven) doomscrolls was the cover of Bad Bunny’s 2025 album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, which features two white plastic garden chairs on a grassy lawn. These monobloc chairs, the posts claimed, evoke a sense of nostalgia for anyone who comes from South America, and even sparked the idea that, by placing them on the album cover, Bad Bunny was dedicating the album to Puerto Ricans around the world. These chairs aren’t uniquely ordinary to Latin America only. For anyone living in Reykjavík, they carry the same sense of an everyday, familiar object, a household staple even. When Fischersund perfumery and art collective released their No. 101 scent in 2022, dedicated to Reykjavík’s backyards, they used these chairs as the signature element of the scent’s promo imagery. Following the release of the scent came the accompanying song “Bakgarðar” (backyards, in Icelandic) by Kjartan Holm, Sin Fang, and Jónsi. Though redesigned into a translucent element, at the heart of the single’s cover art sits the very same chair. The song is a mesmerising lyrical ode to the town’s back gardens: messy, overgrown, often tiny, but simultaneously so unique to this place. As I lie in bed with a terrible cold, I play “Bakgarðar” on repeat, imagining walking home past my neighbours’ backyards: the fresh smell of rhubarb in the air, huge yellow dandelions sticking out of the most unexpected places, and these chairs stacked next to a couple of empty beer bottles. It’s long past midnight, but the sun is still up, and while summer is short-lived, in this moment it feels like it’s going last forever. I’m so ready.

Now, can someone spray me with Fischersund No. 101? The next best thing to Reykjavík summer. IZ

I know everyone’s got their eyes on a special holiday happening this week…there’s a certain buzz in the air…everyone’s getting ready to celebrate…yes, you know what I’m talking about…Happy International Radio Day!

Personally, as a former radio station manager, I think I should get a day off to celebrate. But getting to write about radio is a close second. The past two weeks, I’ve been tuning into Radio Mjódd, which broadcasts a smattering of indie rockers and alternative musicians from Iceland and beyond (all while shouting out one of the Capital Region’s most liminal spaces). I’ve also been working through a four-part collection of January’s Dark Music Days, which holds an array of warbling, experimental sonic work.

Outside of the national broadcaster, I’ve turned to Iceland-based Thomas Davíð Stankiewicz’s Christmas Special on NTS Radio. Our office is cold, so hearing “Hátíð fer að höndum ein” sung by Hamrahlíðarkórinn feels like a warm embrace in the winter (even if there’s no snow on the ground in Reykjavík). ISH

Last week I felt positively old when I saw social media snippets of this band I’d never heard fill up Prikið on a weekend night. That group was LiteFun, a burgeoning electronica trio that just released their debut EP INTERRAILED in early February. Their name does not disappoint: LiteFun is light, but most importantly, fun. Mixing elements from successful pop groups over the years, namely Retro Stefson and Inspector Spacetime, INTERRAILED offers promise. Steady fours-on-the-floor and repetitive synth beats call for a chance to get lost in the beat. Perhaps the most interesting track is “ALDREI”, whose dizzying vocal chops catch you off guard throughout. Nevertheless, LiteFun’s vocal performances on the record sound dispirited, needing more oomph to make you fully get on board this Interrail train, destination funkytown. JB

Today marks the release of the Ásgeir album Julia on One Little Independent Records, a celebrated English label that out here feels like a major. (This is the label that distributes Björk and The Sugarcubes). Ásgeir has a large presence in my adopted home city of Seattle, as he toured his debut album Dýrð í dauðaþögn (In the Silence) there in 2014 at our beloved Columbia City Theater. With his new record, the atmospheric roots rocker plays to his strengths — outstanding tone on guitar, a deceptive range in vocals, and tasteful understatement in arrangement. For me, I haven’t latched on to a single, though the video for “Ferris Wheel” is pretty. If you grab the album on your streamer, though, it is unlikely you’ll turn it off. BC