Laufey

Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir ( , ; born April 23, 1999), known by the mononym Laufey, is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. She achieved notability in the early 2020s, and describes her musical style, a mixture of jazz pop and bedroom pop, as "modern jazz". Having performed as a cello soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra at age 15, Laufey was a finalist on Ísland Got Talent (2014) and semi-finalist on The Voice Iceland (2015). In 2021, she released her debut EP, Typical of Me, and graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, United States. Her debut album, Everything I Know About Love, was released in 2022 and charted in Iceland and the US. It was followed by Bewitched, which was released in 2023 to critical acclaim; the single "From the Start" found moderate success in Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Laufey has cited Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Chet Baker and Taylor Swift as sources of influence. Early life and education Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir was born on April 23, 1999. Her father is Icelandic and her mother is Chinese. The maternal side of her family is from Guangzhou. Her mother is a classical violinist and her grandfather, , was a violin educator at the Central Conservatory of Music in China, which Laufey credits as partly inspiring her love of music. She has an identical twin sister named Júnía Lín Jónsdóttir, who is a violinist. Laufey started learning piano at the age of 4 and the cello at the age of 8 and graduated from the Reykjavík College of Music in 2018. There she also studied singing for two years. She spent her childhood moving between Reykjavík and Washington, D.C. At age 15, she performed as a cello soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. While in Iceland, Laufey participated in the 2014 season of Ísland Got Talent—the Icelandic version of Britain's Got Talent—and ended as a finalist. The following year, she also appeared as a contestant on The Voice Iceland and reached the semi-finals. At the time, she was the youngest competitor in the series' history.