Zebra and Snake took a couple of years to develop their songs before making an album. Now the band is introducing a well-being concept that even modern medicine is not able to create – healing music.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Noora Isoeskeli
Tesla coil synthesizers, stalactite caves and a psychic foretelling machine – no wonder it usually takes four years to make and release a Pepe Deluxé album.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Noora Isoeskeli
During the past year Finland has seen the emergence of several rap artists with an immigrant background. Who are they and why are they talked about right now?
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Antti Ahtiluoto
The Helsinki-based Regina knows that time is a pop band’s worst enemy. However, it found a new sound from its own past.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Sanna Lehto
The Helsinki-based Siinai may be a newcomer to the indie scene, but its music is far from the pleasantly loud traditional indie sound. That could hardly even be expected from a band that wants to create a theme album for the Olympics.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Vesa Mäkinen
One night only theater performances, new poetry, music, visual arts, open-air cinema, this summer the Kalasatama Container Square is full of events and people.
Text Taru Torikka
Photos Noora Lehtovuori
Three years ago, the French-Finnish band The Dø delighted us with their experimental and slightly naive indie pop of their debut album. The likable duo will make a comeback at Flow Festival in August, with the second album that will be released in the fall.
Text Teemu Fiilin
During the past 15 years, the Finnish jazz and rhythm talent Teppo Mäkynen has played in a number of bands and recorded albums under different names, however never under his own name.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Johannes Romppanen
Mirel Wagner is like a music lover’s daydream. The young singer-songwriter from Espoo appeared out of the blue in 2010 and managed to convince even the most dedicated music lovers with her blues-folk sound. Now, Wagner is moving on to win the hearts of the rest of the world’s population.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Hertta Kiiski
Rubik can, for a good reason, be called Finland’s biggest indie band. The band’s indie approach is illustrated not only in its style of music but also in its way of thinking and the channel through which it releases its albums.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Matti Tanskanen
French Films has shot to indie fame quite quickly. It’s undoubtedly the most blogged about Finnish pop band and one of the first Finnish bands to make waves outside of Finland thanks to foreign music blogs. This year the band is set to fulfill the expectations they have created.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Sanna Lehto
These days, geographical distances don’t prevent keeping a band together, although they may slow things down. Le Futur Pompiste’s timeless pop is a good example.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Sauli Sirviö
Islaja is one of the biggest names in the Finnish forest folk genre. Despite this, her music is nothing like forests – or folk.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Hertta Kiiski
Shine 2009 makes dance pop with emotion and logic.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Kaarle Hurtig
Saxophonist Timo Lassy is one of the do-it-alls of today’s Finnish jazz. He has seen the rise of the genre from music academies to club dancefloors.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Osma Harvilahti
”I have hundreds of songs in the drawer, but right now I have at least three or four really good tracks that I want to publish post haste. The new material will be deeper and more techno than my previous club tracks”, says music producer Ercola.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Mikko Ryhänen
Indie is the new mainstream, and electro is the new dance. In the early 2000s masses of artists fled to Barcelona. Now Berlin has become the unofficial second home of Finnish musicians.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Johannes Ekholm
“The color of music is now quite white, and new artists and albums are flowing out of the indie rock-folk-electro field, maybe even too much”, says Tuomas Kallio, musician and artistic director of Flow Festival and Pori Jazz.
Text Heini Lehtinen
Photos Verna Kovanen
Kiki Pau has been labeled an over-trendy indie group from Helsinki’s Punavuori, but the band is in fact as organic as a rock group can be in today’s world.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Osma Harvilahti
Founded by Juha Kyyrö, record company Fullsteam records will only take an act on if every employee likes it. Kyyrö also does a lot of work behind the scenes. He’s brought an impressive bunch of indie artists to Finland: Wilco, Lily Allen, Band of Horses, Billy Talent… the list goes on.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Sanna Lehto
Based on looks alone, it would be easy to label Vanity Beach as yet another goth band afraid of daylight. However, under the surface lies a modern rock band that knows how to utilize electronic instruments and pop melodies.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Matti Tanskanen
Architects Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala are setting up house all over the world with music project Renaissance Man.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Juliana Harkki
Sister Flo was known as an indie band – until they plunged into the unknown and made a new album with DJ Jori Hulkkonen.
Text Teemu Fiilin
The classics in album cover art have always been visual representations of the music as well as gateways into the universe of the album. One has to wonder: is this still the case today, as the majority of music is purchased as binary code online instead of tangible, store-bought albums?
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Kai Kuusisto
Helsinki-based Husky Rescue is hard to define with direct musical comparisons. Instead, their music is easier to describe through movies, cardinal directions, emotions, times of day, temperatures, natural phenomena or even last night’s dreams.
Text Teemu Fiilin
Photos Jussi Puikkonen
Light snow 
20X0 – A Journey into the Future
8. October 2011
Heureka – The Finnish Science Centre
Seven Connections – Finnish Architecture Abroad
11. January 2012
Museum of Finnish Architecture
Yellow City – Illustrated Stories from Helsinki
16. January 2012
All around the city
20. January 2012
Kiasma – Museum of Contemporary Art
DesignWorld – Designing the New World
27. January 2012
Design Museum
Bi-monthly magazine about Helsinki. In Finnish and in English.
